Haiku (?) in English

The form clearly has great appeal for writers in English. This despite the obvious problems. The main one of course is stress. Japanese, according to G.S.Fraser[1], is unstressed. English can’t avoid being stressed. So simply counting syllables is not enough. It seems we have to take as much account of stress patterns in writing haiku as in writing any other kind of poem, even though the condensed form makes this more of a challenge.

         By the way, I recently had the experience of digging out the notes for a poem called ‘The Allegri String Quartet at Fishguard Festival’[2], to do a display showing the writing process. To my surprise I found that I had used a syllable count (nine per line) to organize the poem.  (This, to my embarrassment, after telling one or two fellow poets that I thought such an exercise was a waste of time!) The poem nevertheless has five definite beats to the line, though I think the rhythm is different from the usual iambic pentameter, no doubt because of the constraint of syllabics.

         Fraser notes that in writing haiku the Japanese poets ‘makes no overt comment’, and also that they’re seasonal poems . So maybe a lot of the 5-7-5 three-liners I’ve written aren’t really haiku. This doesn’t bother me at all: the form is such a satisfying way to deal with stuff. The only problem is what to call the little beasts. At one time I thought of using the word ‘traplets’—a heavy-handed pun on ‘triplets’ and the idea of a trapping an elusive thought. But I’ve gone back to calling them haiku . . . with misgivings. Here are some of them, with the aforesaid misgivings.

The sea is making
love to each dark mound of rock,

coming with white foam.

Too clunky a metaphor, betraying the poet’s presence?

One thing about death:

you don’t have to clean your teeth
or the kitchen floor.

Hmm. Definitely not seasonal, and the comment much too overt.

 ‘Love thine enemy.’

‘Why’d ya kill Bin Laden, bub?’

‘We call that tough love.’

Even worse . . . but I was very happy to nail a thought.

Driving through Carlisle
we saw posters Shop at Binn’s.

Dad said, ‘Cats do that.’

Is this close, even though not seasonal? Anyway, it’s one of my favourites.

The sheep have been shorn
and the wind is everywhere.

‘Bare,’ they chorus, ‘Bare!’

Even closer?

Now the blade of dawn
laid along the eastern hills
peels away the dark.

No, no, more self-conscious imagery . . . And finally

At Mum’s funeral
Reverend read her CV
for a job in heaven.

This goes down well at readings. But is it a haiku? And do the stresses in all the above fall musically? (I haven’t marked them.) What do you think?

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[1] Fraser, G.S., Metre, Rhyme, and Free Verse, Methuen 1970

[2] Published in Stand magazine (new series), March 1999. 

Harold Massingham: a tribute

Harold Massingham, who died last year, had a big influence on my poetry at a crucial stage. This is a tribute to him.

I’d enrolled in his extra-mural class at Manchester University. I got in the lift to the second floor with a big bearded Anglo-Saxon of noble bearing. Was this the poet himself? I was too shy to ask. But it proved to be he.

The way he read aloud was a revelation. Rhythm, cadence, passion were all there. South Yorkshire too. He was generous in his comments on our work, but if you read between the lines you could tell what needed to be worked on. Another revelation was the amount of labour that could go into a poem. He showed us the worksheets for ‘Agnes Cassilda Adams’ (in whose kitchen the wallpaper ‘blebbed like wens’—marvellous phrase). The wodge of paper was a good half-inch thick. I still keep my worksheets, few of the packages as thick as Harold’s, but some not far off.

After the class, those who lived in South Manchester and beyond would join him in the Albert in Didsbury. In my second year he would invite me back to his home with a few pints inside us, to listen to Wagner. ‘A giant has the Ring!’ he told me excitedly. He was repainting the house meticulously, scraping clean every groove in every architrave and skirting. Several times I nearly missed the last bus to Bramhall.

I got to know his work through his collection Frost Gods. Even on the printed page his voice resonated, and still does, in my head. ‘Blood and cream bullion’ to describe a cow, for instance. ‘Humiliating thews’ for Beethoven’s stature. He also read to the class his unpublished poems, many of which were not collected until years later in Sonatas and Dreams. My pleasure in seeing it launched was short-lived—it was the day John Major was re-elected.

I once saw a school performance of Britten’s Noyes Fludde in which he played the Voice of God. I told him afterwards that I thought he was type-cast.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, my poem ‘English Rain’, which I read on Radio 3, owes almost everything to Harold Massingham. So thanks again, Harold, and if you’re up there, please look down, kindly as always, and bless my work.