THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 26 December 2024 — Matthew Caretti, featured poet

hosts: Vidya Shankar & Shalini Pattabiraman

A Thursday Feature.

poet of the month: Matthew Caretti

26 December 2024

Matthew Caretti

Matthew has been influenced in equal parts by his study of German language and literature, by the approach of the Beat writers, by his travels and his Zen monastic training. After leaving the Seo-un Hermitage, Matthew engaged in a pilgrimage through South Asia before returning to Africa, where he had lived and worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He served as Principal at Amitofo Care Centre, an orphanage and school for five hundred children in Malawi, and as director of the same NGO’s centre in Lesotho. Matthew now teaches English and leads a simple life in Pago Pago, American Samoa. His collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, winner of the Snapshot Press eChapbook Award), Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press) and Ukulele Drift: Poems from a Small Island (2023, Red Moon Press). His prose and poems appear regularly in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, contemporary haibun online, Hedgerow, Cattails, Tiny Moments and several other journals. He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award for his haibun ‘Deep Water Port’.

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We wrap up this month with two more of Matthew's exquisite haibun.

Talitiga

Not quite sea sick

but knowing what might come

I spend the hours between land

in a hard bunk quiet.

                                                            hitching a ride

Save for the screws

that remind with their thrum

of the wavelengths in between

placid old ports.

                                                            on the fuel ship

Its name implies

a bold response to misfortune

to knowing the rest of the world

but abiding here.

porthole moon

cho, December 2024

https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/table-of-contents-20-3/haibun-20-3/matthew-caretti-talitiga/

Malawi Orphanage

The children bow and chant and exercise and breakfast. Then the day. The weekend. Open. Free. The way of their ancestors.

chiChewa

the warmth of

morning maize

The quiet day into a quiet night. An occasional burst of song from the nearby village. From the road to Zomba.

night bus

how speed

bends sound

I wake before the rest. Stretch. Feel the Sunday world come to life.

vipassana

birdsong enters

the side doors

Twilight lengthens. No electricity to speed it along. The deep of the dry season. Of rivers reduced to a trickle.

load sharing

candle stubs prop up

each new flame

Light comes of its own accord. No switch to turn. Only to watch from the porch. To know this moment. This little chore.

darning socks

the sudden whole

of the sun

NOTES:

“ChiChewa” is the official language of Malawi.

“Vipassana” is the Pali term for insight meditation.

“Load sharing” is the term used to describe the process of rolling blackouts in Malawi.

  Modern Haiku 49.1, Winter-Spring 2018

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VS: We notice some recurrent themes in your haibun, like the references to the sea and everything about it which, I assume, is the influence of your geographical and cultural background. What advice would you give to someone whose work is rooted in their culture yet want to give it that universal appeal?

MC: The sea has certainly become a motif in my poems since I moved to a seaside shack in American Samoa in 2021. Likewise, when I’d just come out of the monastery, my African work explored themes like the transient nature of things and altruism. But I eventually returned to teaching in Malaysia and then came the pandemic, so pieces became grounded in that culture, literature and some deep introspection born of isolation. Likewise, when I return home to Pennsylvania, I am seeing a place at once with new eyes and caught up in old memories. All that is to note that geography and the culture(s) associated with it have had and continue to have a profound effect on my work, yet at the heart of it all, I hope, is the human condition. Our yearning for love and to be loved, for kindness, for understanding and, ultimately, to share and to learn. To find our collective way to a life well lived.

VS: About your haibun we have featured all through this month, what would you want us, at THG, to take away from them?

MC: Each reader will take something different—shreds of a rainbow among old lava peaks, something to ponder about man’s connection to nature, glimpses of island love and the joys of living here, a bit of the melancholy associated with loss and, in the end, how we might persevere. That’s the beauty of this form. There is space enough for the reader in each piece. Gates will appear. Invitations. The decision then is whether and how to enter.

Prompt for members:

"Gates will appear. Invitations. The decision then is whether and how to enter."

What does this statement mean to you especially as we move into the new year a week from now? Retrospection? Prediction? A new year resolution? Let's read through Matthew's answer to the final question once again for inspiration.

Haibun outside this prompt can also be posted!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!

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PLEASE NOTE:

1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt. Please put your name and country of residence under your poem, it makes the editors' work easier. Thanks.

2. Share your best-polished pieces.

3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.

Let it simmer for a while.

4. When poets give suggestions and if you agree to them - post your final edited version on top of your original version.

5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.

We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly journal.