Daily Haiku - 2

the pale grey-green leaves

of the olive trees shimmer

in the winter sun

Daily Haiku - summer wanes

long days, shorter nights
the earth turns on its axis
long nights, shorter days

Yesterday's Daily Haiku

I posted this on the wrong blog yesterday. Duh!

Daily Haiku - still no rain



bearing promises
autumn clouds thunder but leave
with their empty threats

No Haiku, merely thoughts

Thinking it over I’ve come to the realisation that I am missing the mark on the Haiku thing. While it is a very elegant exercise to pick a subject, create three lines, each with the correct syllable count, and relatively easy, in itself the result is not enough. If I understand the Haiku correctly, there should also be a pivotal shift or denouement by the end. That I am not achieving. Also, this posting of a photo taken of said subject shows an utter lack of faith in my words and their ability to conjure a valid image/idea. Therefore, I need to put more time and thought into them and decide whether to stop posting the pictures.
Yesterday I had arranged to meet Rhay and Sandra at noon for coffee to ‘celebrate’, in Rhay’s words, a week of writing. More specifically to celebrate her epiphany about a basic fault she has finally cracked in her novel after struggling with it over four drafts. I decided to get to Costa Coffee early, to sit and observe and work on description exercises in public. However, I did something else. On the OU forums there has been some buzz about a New Scientist competition/call for a piece of flash fiction set a 100 years in the future. I am not a SF or Fantasy fan but reading over a couple of pieces brave people had offered for critique, I was struck by how clichéd and predictable and bizarre they were. I know that sounds a contraindication but what I mean is this: I do not believe 100 years into the future will mean crazy societal changes, weird names and total loss of how we live our lives today. There will be radical shifts, yes, but only in a way that regulates how we live. I do not believe there will be a shift to an unrecognizable and almost alien way of living from that which we have now. These changes will have seeped into our lives, almost passively and we will not be so aware of how our world has changed. People will still be called John, Mary, Poppy etc. Not Zorda, Kreetor or Torphid. Anyway, I had a small idea running in the back corridors of my brain. I sat down to write it, not as a piece of flash fiction, as it needed more to flesh it out, as an exercise to realise my thoughts. An hour and a half later, I had a rough, almost ready, short story of maybe 1000-1500 words. I rather liked it and I like the effort of trying to imagine known or old concepts differently so that they are at once familiar but slightly menacing or at the least worrying.

Daily Haiku - summer is over

the swallows have left

their nest above the front door

empty and silent

Daily Haiku

hills are draped with gold
trees still black as dying night
light changes focus

shadow-scapes of trees

fade from black into green life

as the dawn creeps in

Daily Haiku - The Eternal Triangle

cats fighting at dawn
two ginger males stake their claim
on Rocky, baby girl

Daily Haiku - the paradox of the bumble bee

bumble bee hovers
in the flowers hard at work
unaware of heft

Daily Haiku - After the rain

fingers of ash streak
the sky falling towards night
clouds backlit with gold

Daily Haiku

a September storm
around mid-afternoon swept
through and soon was gone

DAILY HAIKU

DAILY HAIKU

Yes I've started the course, to get ahead and it says to do a daily haiku.

So I shall.

ceramic red-tailed

bird sits in the summer sun

awaiting winter

The BRB has arrived.

Finally, today, delivered to my door. The big, more hefty, red book. Also four audio CDs, a study guide, and the dreaded Tutor Marked Assessment (TMA) book. Five TMAs and one End of Course Assessment (ECA). All challenging and exciting. So from not having anything crying to me for attention I now have these and the Stephen Fry poetry book An Ode Less Travelled. His book has mixed opinions but if nothing else it is an entertaining read.

Am listening to a BBC book club podcast with John Irving, writer of The World According to Garp. The podcasts are terrific ranging from international writers to Annie Proulx, Alice Walker, Sebastian Faulks, derek walcott and so many more. Bliss.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/wbc/

Unexpected

a box of old thoughts

unearthed in my autumn years

bring flowering ideas

Waiting

I'm waiting somewhat impatiently for the arrival of the course book, a big red book apparently, affectionately known as the BRB. Everyone else in the world seems to have got theirs except me.
To while away the time usefully, I am in the process of trawling all my notebooks, travel diaries and itinerent scraps of paper for random ideas, snippets of phrases, half written stories & articles, and am transcribing them into one large hardbacked book.
It is surprising and amazing to rediscover ideas going back ten or more years. Ideas which I have never used but have faithfully carted around the world in the belief I would use them one day. As I read and write, new thoughts spring forth, but what perplexes me most are the cryptic phrases which have no immediate resonance and I am left wondering what was in my head. Happily the words themselves are suggesting new things which I am including in brackets in order to distinguish the original thoughts from the new. Even trying to decipher my writing is launching new ideas.
It is a task which is making me extraordinarily happy.

Posting debate

On the OU forum, there now seems to be a debate about whether to post work which might be used during the course, as it could mean accusations of plagarism (from oneself?) and get into trouble with copyright issues (I wish!). But it is useful to put pieces out, because it feels like a personal declaration of taking myself seriously. Instead of keeping my scribbles close to my chest, I am taking the big step of opening out to anyone (no matter how few, or how related) to read.
So I will keep posting but perhaps with a more considered choice.

Not a Haiku

a miscounted line
mars my haiku as summer
refuses to fade

Yesterday's previous paltry attempt has too many syllables. Oh well...
Maybe this is better?


still blue pool ruffles
in a hot September wind
and autumn slips in

David Hockney

Hi Anna,
David Hockney (whose work I love) typically paints these intense summer blue pools. I felt the DH tag would shortcut the description of such a summer pool.
Thanks for your comments. This is fun.

Is this a Haiku?

David Hockney pool
September afternoon autumn
gusts pleat the surface

Where to start?

I get the drift from the A215 Creative writing forum that having a blog is A GOOD THING. I don't know but am willing to try anything that makes me write. So I need to start producing current pieces, as I'm pretty tired of my old stuff which has been in the pipeline for so long. I think that I need a fresh outlook so this is my attempt. The intention is to post something every day, no matter how small or inconsequential. That is the intention. Whether I do is another matter. Any way here is a picture of the most magical bookshop I've ever been in. It's in Paris, near Notre Dame and is called Shakespeare & Co. Tumbling books, steep narrow staircases, tight aisles, battered comfy chairs to sit and browse, sunlight spilling into the upstairs reading room and a cute cupboard for would be writers to bang out their masterpieces on an old red typewriter (or tripewriter as my mother used to call it).