THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 5th September 2024. Harriot West, featured poet

hosts: Kala Ramesh & Firdaus Parvez

mentor: Lorraine Haig

A Thursday Feature. 5th September

This month we'll be showcasing haibun written by Harriot West

Here is our first offering from Harriot West’s vast repertoire.

Picking Sunflowers for Van Gogh

It’s not an easy task. For all his impasto and rough ways with the brush, he’s extraordinarily fussy about his flowers. And he hates it when they droop. Sometimes I see him gently cup a sagging bloom. So tenderly it’s easy to imagine him helping an old woman lug her panier up a rickety flight of stairs. I like him then. Despite how demanding he is to work for. Never a word of thanks. My hands stained with pollen, to say nothing of dust rags that look as though they’ve been steeped in saffron.

It’s a pity he isn’t fonder of roses. Except for those thorns. Lavender perhaps? I’d fancy that. Brushing my fingertips along the stalks, carrying their scent throughout the day, dreaming about a wild man with ginger hair and reckless ways.

        heat wave

        the honey bee’s

        restless thrum

Harriot West

KYSO Flash Issue 6: Fall 2016

Ekphrastic Haibun Story: 146 words

Some interesting information from Harriot:

The best way for me to write an Ekphrastic haibun is simply to let my imagination run wild. Years ago I lived in a walk-up flat in Paris so I am familiar with rickety flights of stairs and the inconvenience of lugging groceries up to the top floor. I love sunflowers but not as cut flowers. The blossoms invariably droop by the second day and I am constantly wiping up pollen. Somehow those experiences came together and I wrote this piece.

As a side note and cautionary tale, I was absolutely thrilled when the haibun was selected for Best Small Fictions 2017. I’d bought a copy of an older volume and carried it about with me obsessively for weeks. When the notice of my acceptance came, I almost deleted the email, thinking it was simply an ad to buy the upcoming volume. Moral of the story: read your email!

Do you want to know more about the author?

Harriot West lives in Eugene, Oregon. She is a three-time winner of the Modern Haiku award for best haibun as well as a recipient of the Museum of Haiku Literature Award. Her first book, Into the Light (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2014), a collection of haibun and haiku, tied for first place in the 2015 Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanterman Book Awards. Her second book, Shades of Absence, a collection of haibun and tanka prose, was published in 2018 by Red Moon Press.

Her second book, Shades of Absence, a collection of haibun and tanka prose, was published in 2018 by Red Moon Press and received a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award.

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What strikes you about Harriot’s work? What do you like how the prose leaps from the title and then again forms a bridge between the title and the haiku? How does the author pick a thread or an idea from an artist’s masterpiece and then bring the conversation back to herself?

Can we invite you to write a haibun from a piece of art that you love or have drawn yourself?

Haibun outside this prompt is welcome too.

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.