Author: Simon Hanson

July is behind us and August lies before, what opportunities await . . .

A Haiku Story

In this segment we are intending to share the background and history to a particular haiku so as to gain some understanding of the haiku’s origin, a window on how one haiku came to be.  If you have an engaging story and would like to share it we’d be very interested to hear it; send it to me via the email secretary link on the main page of the website – there is the possibility we may be able to include it in the next Members’ News.

Our Haiku Story this week comes in the form of a haibun from Beverley George and concerns a haiku that was first published on the Australian Haiku Society Winter Solstice String, June 2017.

Crouching Dragon

On my third visit to Garyu Sanso, (crouching dragon) villa, I am in the congenial company of a small group of Australian travellers. With a guide, we climb stone steps beside the Hiji River and enter the thatch-roofed building; marvel at the moon window, the exquisite openwork carvings depicting the seasons and the views from the rear deck of the gently landscaped garden that leads down to a tea-hut. Our guide points out the master carpenters’ signatures etched into a few nail heads in a section of the wooden decking. She tells of the clay pots buried beneath the earth under the house that enhance the quality of music played there on festive occasions.

We walk towards the tea hut, everyone concentrating on the guide’s words, and making occasional notes as she describes the botan moss that turns from white to green when scooped water is tipped on to it, and the living yew that supports one corner of the hut.

There is a sudden diversion. Everyone’s attention switches to a tiny creature on a bed of moss. The mouse is unperturbed by the huddle of strangers that surrounds it and continues to preen and nibble rather than hide beneath adjacent fern.

a mouse perched on moss
halts the guided garden tour –
ten cameras flash

(Garyu Sanso (Crouching Dragon) house, Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan

Beverley George

 

Recent document links to the website

The Australian Haiku Society has recently placed links to the historically important First Australian Haiku Anthology: Bird, John and Bostok, Janice M. Converted to PDF format by The Haiku Foundation and available in their Digital Library, and; The Dreaming Collection: Bird, John. Converted to PDF format by The Haiku Foundation and available in their Digital Library.

Continue reading “Members’ News July, 2017”