THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 2nd April 2026 Billie Dee - Guest Editor
- Srinivas Sambangi
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh
Guest Editor: Billie Dee
Host: Srinivas Sambangi
Featured Poet: William Stafford
Introduction:
English-language haibun has moved well beyond the travel-journal model
associated with Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North.* It can hold
lyric prose, lineation, concrete play, and newer experimental forms that
refuse neat labels.
This five-part series explores haibun written in response to poems from
the Western tradition. I think of this pairing as a kind of literary ekphrasis,
not commentary, exactly, but entering a canonical field, listening, and
answering back.
*Oku no Hosomichi 奥の細道
A Thursday Feature
2nd April 2026
This series begins with William Stafford, a poet whose gift for understatement makes him an unexpected but natural companion to haibun. His poems rarely insist. Instead, they notice, register, and leave the moral pressure in the air. That quality matters to haibun, where the strongest work often depends less on explanation than on witness held in reserve.
Our focal poem is Stafford’s “Vacation,” in which the speaker glimpses a graveside scene from the window of a moving train, then returns to the ordinary act of pouring coffee. The poem does not resolve the tension between sorrow and routine. It simply lets both stand. Haibun can work the same way: the moment is seen, acknowledged, and left partly open.
One scene as I bow to pour her coffee:—
Three Indians in the scouring drouthHuddle at the grave scooped in the gravel . . .
__________
Stafford, William. “Vacation,” The Hudson Review, Winter 1950.
In response, I offer a haibun shaped by another passing encounter, this one seen not from a train but from the back seat of an Uber. The impulse is similar: a moment of witness inside an otherwise ordinary errand, and the uneasy knowledge that acknowledgment is not the same as rescue.
Veteran
--after William Stafford
by Billie Dee
Traffic is snarled and I’m late for my evening flight. We take a side-street detour, passing abandoned warehouses and a vacant lot overgrown with weeds.
Through the Uber window I spot a homeless man—Vietnam flak jacket, pants down—squatting in the bushes. He waves as the dark sedan rolls by.
I wave back.
new moon
a police chopper’s searchlight
sweeping for someone
Drifting Sands Haibun #33, Sept 2025.
Prompt
Has there been a moment when you witnessed something fleeting, disturbing, or oddly tender from a place of safety or routine? A scene glimpsed but never resolved? Write a haibun in response to that tension. Let the moment speak without fixing it.
***
Welcome Billie Dee, as a guest editor for this month.
I'm sure Trivenians enjoy your take on some of the best haibun and actively participate with their haibun on the prompts provided by you
_Srinivas
#1
Another Planet's Hell*
I'm at a donut-maker's shop, holding a national daily. He primarily sells donuts and tea. I am a regular customer for his tea. As a side product, he also sells tea dust. It is a special tea, blended with spices. Obviously, a bit expensive. It inspired me to start my own teashop.
While waiting for my order, I leaf the newspaper through pages. Under the page, "International" section, a headline catches my eyes, "Trump Issues Fiery Threat against Iran."
The donut-maker hands me two packs of tea dust.
image of a downed transport plane wreckage
Tejendra Sherchan, Nepal
*Borrowed from Aldous Huxley's quote, "Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Post #1
6.4.26
The other side
We settle into plush chairs as the table begins to fill, one delicate course after another. A velvety mushroom soup arrives first, paired with a modest portion of pasta, its aroma warm and inviting. Soon, the main course follows in a quiet procession—grilled vegetables resting on a bed of noodles, slow-cooked rogan josh rich with spice, stuffed bell peppers, dal makhni, and an assortment of fresh breads.
I sit facing a large glass window that frames the grandeur of the restaurant. On the other side, a little girl presses her tiny face against the spotless pane. Her palms are splayed wide, her lips moving in silent words I cannot hear. When our eyes meet,…
#1
In the Blink of an Eye
We return home via the long straight roads through the outback to see how ravaged the country really is. A foot hovers over the brake for the odd animal that can still stand and search for food. Then to the right I glimpse a field with green grass. There are twenty to thirty ewes looking fat and contented. Outside the enclosure a ram, skin and bone, barely standing. The fleece hanging from his frame.
town boundary
sprinklers water the
sports ground
https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/celebration
The Touchstone long list is up.
Please check and cheer our poets!
#2 In Passing
The cow noses through a heap of roadside waste, patient as if this too were pasture. A torn plastic bag crackles between its teeth. It chews, pauses, chews again. A motorbike passes, then another. I stand there longer than I should, as if looking might change something. The bag disappears bit by bit. Its eyes remain calm, almost trusting. late summer —
the empty trough
ringed with flies
Sathya Venkatesh, India