Shamrock Haiku Journal

A Swedish View On Haiku

by Kai Falkman

 

Swedish readers were first introduced to haiku in a book review published in the daily Svenska Dagbladet in 1933. It was a review of the book by Professor Asataro Miyamori titled "An Anthology of Haiku, Ancient and Modern". The reviewer described haiku as “the world´s shortest poem” and expressed doubt about the success of this metrical form among Swedish readers.
 
He was right. The first ever haiku in the Swedish language was written more than 25 years later by Dag Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General of the United Nations. During the autumn of 1959 he wrote 110 haiku poems, all of which contained 17 syllables but didn't have any season words. Furthermore, while many of Dag Hammarskjöld's haiku poems were rather abstract and philosophical, most of them followed the Japanese tradition of being concrete and visual. Just one example:

 
 
Referring to his poems, Dag Hammarskjöld wrote the following words that reflect the spirit of haiku:
 
“Simplicity is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. /.../ Resting in the centre of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can catch only glimpses.”
 
This statement accords with the haiku tradition of presenting a thing or an event just as it is, without connecting it to ourselves. Needless to say that a haiku written by a poet is connected to him anyway. Any special effort to emphasise this connection is, in a sense, redundant.
 
Swedish haiku usually describe the author's experience not only with nature but also with human relations. We do not differentiate between haiku and senryu. Sometimes a poem has several layers of meaning. Thus a concrete image may bring to the reader's mind some abstract thoughts, depending on his imagination. However, abstract ideas directly expressed in haiku are more like intellectual constructions rather than sensory experiences related to the author's vision, hearing and the sense of smell, and therefore alien to pure haiku. As a rule, haiku strive to depict a real-life scene, sometimes demonstrate a certain occurance in nature, and occasionally have an unexpected ending or a lingering poetic atmosphere.
 
The Swedish haiku movement is gradually developing. In 1999, the Swedish Haiku Society was formed in order to bring together all haiku poets in Sweden, spread knowledge of haiku in our country and encourage Swedish poets to write in this particular genre. The Society now has about 150 members. Haiku are being written by many more Swedish people, including even schoolchildren. The best Swedish haiku poems appear in the Society´s quarterly, Haiku.

Kai Falkman is the current President of the Swedish Haiku Society

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Sydney Harbour After Rain by Lars Vargö (Sweden)

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Inchicore Haiku - 25 Years After

by Mark Lonergan

Born in West Limerick, Michael Hartnett (1941-1999) was one of the most important Irish poets of the last half-century. He published dozens of volumes of poetry in both Irish and English. In 1975 he announced that he was writing only in Irish and that English was “the perfect language to sell pigs in”.

In 1985, however, Hartnett returned to the vernacular with a sustained sequence of 87 poems entitled Inchicore Haiku. Although the poems are labelled haiku, it is more correct to call them senryu. They are deeply personal, and encompass a broad range of themes. Harnett had been in a state of personal turmoil, his marriage had broken down, his father had just passed away, and he had returned to Dublin after attempting to live in rural Templeglantine in his native west Limerick. He was also drinking very heavily. Added to these physical effects, he was in artistic turmoil in that he was contemplating a linguistic U-turn from his previous intention to write only in Irish.

Hartnett was always something of an enthusiast and was always open to the exotic. At 21 years of age, while working as curator of the Joyce museum in Sandycove, he had attempted a translation of the fifth century Chinese poet Tao Yuan-ming. Through his life he translated Catullus, Heinrich Heine, Haicead, O' Raithaille, etc. The tight structure of haiku/senryu allowed him to juxtapose his own life and feeling with the urban landscape of Inchicore this gave him a route back to English. He chose to adhere to the 5-7-5 structure, which had been abandoned by most English-language haiku poets.

The scene is well set in the title page.

  

My English dam bursts

and out stroll all my bastards

Irish shakes its head

This piece encapsulates the poets return to English.

His present life in Inchicore is alluded to in the first page.

Now in Inchicore

my cigarette smoke rises

like lonesome pub talk

This paints the image of a lonesome man smoking in a pub while thinking after his wife and dead father.

His isolation and inability to engage in social intercourse is touché on in the following piece:

In the empty house

the doorbell calls "Company"

I hide on the stairs

Hartnett is particularly sardonic when address the question of the local clergy in Inchicore, Hartnett, while being deeply spiritual, was no fan of organised religion. There is a strong touch of William Blake in Hartnett's commentary on the religious.

In Saint Michael’s church

a plush Bishop in his frock 

confirms poverty

 

What do bishops take

when the price of bread goes up?

A vow of silence 

Unemployment and politicians are also commented on throughout his poems. This is still relevant 25 years after, as Ireland finds herself in the throes of another recession.

All the flats cry out

Is there life before Dole day?

The pawnshops snigger

 

Along Emmet Road

politician’s promises

blow like plastic bags

Even though most of the poems can be classed as senryu, there is a strong imagist strain in Inchicore Haiku. Hartnett was much influenced by Ezra Pound and the imagist movement. As Seamus Heaney points out, “It is also correct to say that there is a certain resemblance between vernacular Irish and the traditional way of looking at things. The poet’s duty is to be truthful and not be bounded in by abstractions of form. Japanese poetry, with its chastity and reticence, grows more attractive. It has closeness to common experience and sensitivity to the grieving nature of human experience.”

Of course, Michael Hartnett’s Inchicore Haiku can’t serve as a model for a modern-day haiku writer. Only one of these poems passes the time’s test and stands up as a perfect haiku, if a 5-7-5 English-language haiku can be perfect.

In a green spring field

a brown pony stands asleep

shod with daffodils

One could, in the words of Oscar Wilde, succumb to temptation and comment on all 87 Hartnett’s poems; however it is more apposite to touch more generally on the wider significance of his work. Inchicore Haiku was the first ever collection of haiku and senryu by an Irish poet, so Hartnett can be regarded as a trailblazer. In the following 25 years there has been significant interest in haiku in this country. The haiku form has since been embraced by quite a number of outstanding poets, and it is only right that we now celebrate Michael Hartnett’s legacy.

 

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DOGHOUSE Books have a limited number of copies left of two collections of haiku poems by two Irish haijin:

John W Sexton. Shadows Bloom. DOGHOUSE Books. Reviewed here

Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Morning at Mount Ring. DOGHOUSE Books. Reviewed here

One can get them postage free for the price of €12 to anywhere in the world.

Also, check out here the range of poetry books and anthologies we've published.

DOGHOUSE Books
PO Box 312
Tralee
Co. Kerry
Ireland

Tel: +353 (0)66 7137547
Fax: +353 (0)66 7137547
info[at]doghousebooks.ie