THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 15th May 2025. Linda Papanicolaou - Guest Editor
- Kala Ramesh
- May 15
- 3 min read
Updated: May 18
host: Rupa Anand
mentor: Lorraine Haig
haibun editors of haikuKATHA:
Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh
A Thursday Feature
15th May 2025
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW
THE HAIBUN GALLERY May 2025 - Linda Papanicolaou
Prompt 1- 3rd week
PROMPTS for MAY 2025
Linda Papanicolaou, US
INTRODUCTION
Sometimes you’ll see the linking of prose and haiku in haibun called “renku-like.” I first learned of it from Bruce Ross’ 2001 essay "Narratives of the Heart". Immediately intrigued, I set out to study renku linking.
Too often you’ll see it said that haibun prose and poem should “scent link” (Basho’s way). I’ve never been satisfied with vague directives that leave you on your own to figure it out. Intuition is certainly important, but I’ve come to believe that a good part of linking is a craft that can be learned. One article I found invaluable was Tadashi Kondo and William B Higginson‘s “Link and Shift: A Practical Guide to Renku Composition”, online at Renku Home. In their section “Types of Linking,” the authors survey verse linking from its early days to its development by Basho and his followers. Most—even all—of these ways of linking can also be used for prose/poem linking in haibun.
This month, our weekly prompts will be skill-building exercises based on a selection of the “Manners of Linking” described by Kondo and Higginson. As you write, explore different solutions to the problem. When you post your final version, please also include a short explanation of your decision process. Also, when giving feedback to others, please focus on the linking.
MAY 15
This week we’ll experiment with linking on person (sono hito). The advice we are generally given is that haibun prose is generally written in first person from a point of view of the author, narrating personal experience in present tense. My experience with an alternative approach came in 2010 when Margaret Chula was invited guest speaker to the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s annual retreat. Her book co-authored with Cathy Erickson, What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps had come out in 2009 so she gave us a workshop on persona haibun. She began by handing out photo portraits of ordinary people in their everyday lives and instructed us to fictionalize, writing in the voice of that character. At sharing time, some of the results were amazing. For me, the approach was the icebreaker for an idea that had been stuck in my computer for three years. I have written a few persona haibun since then; one example, “The Bone Flute,” is in the Hundred Gourds archive at The Haiku Foundation.
The week’s exercise is to write a persona haibun centered on a fictional literary or historical character of your choice. Put yourself in that person’s head and write in their voice. For linking method, use person (sono hito). When you post your persona haibun, please tell us how you chose that character, and how this manner of linking worked for you.
******** Linda,
Too good.
Thank you so much for giving us such good prompts.
We'll all try to write according to your guidelines.
Thank you so much.
_kala
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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NOTICE
NOTICE
Dear Haibuneers
Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)
Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun per submission window.
Kindly note the submissions calendar.
1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May
1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August
1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November
1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February
All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.
Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to: https://forms.gle/xUEiiDR9wd2dgqtR9 only during the submission period.
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The Haibun Gallery continues as is.
We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…
#1
Race against Time
A mad dash for the crucial exam. The gods were kind. He reached early. Wiping his sweat, he sat down on the steps and put the admit card beside him. Perhaps some last minute scrolling?
Swoosh!
A flutter beside him made his heart thump even as a wave of murmur rippled around the crowded hall.
An eagle had swooped down and picked up his admit card. It was now perched atop the doorway holding it in its beak.
He broke out in a sweat.
Flap your arms; swing the door; throw your sandal; a sundry of advice flew his way.
He stood rooted, afraid to scare away the bird…
#2 Sable Muse
— in the voice of Phillis Wheatley
They say I am a curiosity—a dark girl with a quill, a mind that learned to shape the language of my captors. In the Wheatley house, I sit by the window, sunlight pooling on my hands as I copy verses from Milton and Pope. Sometimes the words come to me as if whispered by the wind that once carried me across the ocean. I write of heaven, of virtue, of liberty—though my own chains are only just loosened. They gather in drawing rooms to question my mind, to weigh my soul, to marvel that I can rhyme redemption with affliction. I answer with ink, with hymns, hoping my lines might open…
19/5/25 #1
Revised:
Wire Light
It was small, a little soft on one side---easy to hide under my shirt. Like my sister’s cheek after she fell. I thought maybe I’d keep it for later, but the smell gave it away. Sweet and sharp---how the wind feels when the trees turn yellow, before they brought us here.
I gave half to the boy with the shaking hands. We sat on dry grass. It only scratched my legs. He said thank you, but looked away as he ate. I don’t think he’d said anything all day, or eaten.
Later, I rubbed the bruised part on my palm to see what happened. Red, then brown. Then it broke apart. The same sky as…
#1 Not for a Kingdom
I pluck the ektara and sing with smoke in my throat. I have left behind marble halls and jeweled anklets for this rough stone floor. They say I’ve fallen, a woman who shames her house—but what do they know of the ache that Krishna plants in the chest?
My heart is a bird that knows only one sky.
My only adornment is dust from the pilgrims’ feet. I taste salt when I remember the poison—how it turned sweet in my mouth.
deep in the shrine . . .
petals curl from the coil
under the idol’s foot Sandip Chauhan, USA feedback welcome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabai
#2
A Playboy with a heart
I asked her five times to marry me. She said "yes!" with the right kind of kiss the first time, but for the wrong reason: escaping daddy. We met at Washington University in Saint Louis, she was eighteen enrolled in the music department and I was twenty-three, already a success in the drama department. A quiet marriage when she was nineteen, a divorce fourteen months later when "daddy" finally dug his heels in. His lawyer's ruthlessness had made him uncontrollable.
She remarried four times: with a sailor who fathered her two children, with her childhood dreamboat, with a trickster who abandoned four children of his own and finally with an old fart of an…