Sabaki (lead poet) - Linda Papanicolaou
TRIPARSHVA RENKU - Post 18 SABAKI: L I N D A P A P A N I C O L A O U
POST: Choice of AGEKU
25th JULY 2022
CHOICE OF VERSE 22—Ageku
Wow! We are at the end! Many thanks to everyone who contributed an offer for our ageku. I enjoyed seeing the poem through your eyes. As a verse, the ageku is of a level of importance with the hokku, wakiku and daisan. In traditional renku it was an honor to be asked to write it—just another thing we do a little differently these days, though the poem still is, as John E. Carley characterized it, ”not just an ending but also the fulfilment of anticipation. . .” (New Zealand Poetry Society, https://poetrysociety.org.nz/affiliates/haiku-nz/haiku-poems-articles/archived-articles/introduction-to-renku/
The offer I would like to place is Kanjini’s “makeshift clothesline,” though not her revised version. The first one, with the clothesline swaying in the wind, has an airy feeling about it that reminds me not just of clothes but also of prayer flags of poem slips.
Credits: A screen printing - Flowering Cherry with Poem Slips by Tosa Mitsuoki, 1617-91, Art Institute of Chicago. There’s also a screen depicting an autumn maple tree with poem slips that is its pair.
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What I think stands out about this verse is that it lets us linger a little longer in that garden, and I see the clothesline strung on the bamboo. And, of course, a clothesline of poem strips can be a signifier of our renku itself.
One thing I should mention about the third line’s “spring wind”: you will have read my warnings throughout the renku that we can name a season only once in the renku. The ageku is released from these strictures, so it is not a problem that she has used it here. Nicely done, Kanjini.
our small garden abuzz
with the day’s anecdotes / Mona Bedi
a bamboo fence
lost
in the magnolia haze / Sanjukta Asopa
the makeshift clothesline
swaying in spring wind / Kanjini Devi
FINAL THINGS:
No, we are not finished just yet. We have to title our renku and do some final adjustments to grammar and other things.
CHOOSING A TITLE:
Unlike many other forms of poetry where we look deep into the body of the poem for a title that sums up what the poem is about, it is traditional in renku to take a title from the hokku. The renku is a journey that we set out on twenty-two verses ago, not knowing where we would end, and we want readers to come upon meaning from the verses themselves, not by our giving them a theme in the title. So here are two possible titles from the hokku. Please post your thoughts or suggestions.
House Warming
The Flavours of Summer
TWEAKS
Kala, Firdaus and I have spotted that we have too many prepositional phrases with “of” in sections of the poem, so I’ll be doing some minor substitutions, and perhaps other grammar tweaking. Some verses may need cleaning up. Please re-read your verses, and others, and ask questions or offer suggestions if you’re not sure about anything.
We’ll give the customary 48 hours for your responses.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING TITLES OR TWEAKS
The deadline is 48 hours from now. We follow Indian Standard Time (IST). This POST will go up on 25th July at 6 A.M. So on 27th July at 6 A.M, the window closes (IST). All suggestions for TITLES and tweaks must be posted on this thread BEFORE 6 A.M on 00 July.
THE COMPLETED RENKU
1. Jo
house warming …
all the flavours of summer
on a dining table / Firdaus Parvez
a dozen ripened mangoes
from the neighbour next door / Kala Ramesh
the gleeful shouts
of street kids rolling
a bicycle tyre / Priti Aisola
an airplane through the clouds
in an indigo twilight / Margherita Petriccione
so close
the snow moon
envelops the field / Angiola Inglese
crackling silence as we bend
over the chess board / Sushama Kapur
2. Ha
caparisoned elephants
raising their trumpets amid
the village prayer beats / Lakshmi Iyer
a pied crested cuckoo
on a telephone wire / Marcie Wessels
after the downpour
she squeezes our clothes
under the banyan tree / Milan Rajkumar
a backlit craving races
into an embrace / Kavita Ratna
those dreams
of my first love
once again / Arvinder Kaur
the merry go round horse
stopped on a high note / Robert Kingston
a crick
in the neck
after Sistine Chapel / Sanjukta Asopa
shadows lengthen
into this new bite in the air / Sushama Kapur
moonbeams dipping
into a storm drain and a stream
with the same alacrity / Priti Aisola
the whisper of falling leaves
rolls into a pyramid / Amrutha V. Prabhu
3. Kyu
trekking on Himalayas
when layers
of our false selves peel off / Kala Ramesh
the synchronized silhouettes
of planting rice in paradise / Kanjini Dev
sounds of giggles eyed
the ventriloquist voice
on the Panchatantra / Lakshmi Iyer
our small garden abuzz
with the day’s anecdotes / Mona Bedi
a bamboo fence
lost
in the magnolia haze / Sanjukta Asopa
the makeshift clothesline
swaying in spring wind / Kanjini Devi
THE SCHEMA: NOTE ADJUSTMENTS IN VERSES 8-12 OF HA
Side one - Jo
hokku summer
wakiku summer
daisan non season
4 ns
5. winter moon
6 ns
***
Side 2 - Ha
7 ns
8 monsoon
9 monsoon love
10 ns lv
11 ns lv
12. ns
13 ns
14 autumn
15 au moon
16 autumn
***
Side 3 - Kyu
17 ns
18 monsoon
19 ns
20 spring
21 sp blossom
ageku - sp
Links to our previous week: https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/copy-of-renku-linked-collaborative-verses-triparshva-15-16-call-for-17
*** **** ***** LINKS TO RESOURCES:
The schema for our triparshva: https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/renku-linked-collaborative-verses
URLs for online saijikis: https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/renku-linked-collaborative-verses-triparshva-4-1
Kondo and Higginson, “Link and Shift, A Practical Guide to Renku Composition”: http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/Link_Shift.html
Ferris Gilli, “English Grammar: Variety in Renku”: https://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/whr-archives/grammar-in-renku
Richard Gilbert’s “Muki Saijiki”: https://gendaihaiku.com/research/kigo/05-muki-saijiki-TOC.htm
*** *** *** *** Linda, Woohoo!!! The renku is completed and very nicely too. _()_ Lovely verse, Kanjini