Shamrock
Haiku Journal
of the Irish Haiku Society
Focus on
Bulgaria
Cricket's song...
drops of the autumn rain
land in a cobweb
-- Ludmila Balabanova (translated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
Windy evening –
from the opposite river bank,
the scent of grass
A hazy veil
hiding the morning river –
visible now, my breath
Dinner by candlelight –
between the two of us,
quivering air
-- Ludmila Balabanova (translated by the author and Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
Tiny daisies
plaited into the braids
of ageing grass
So what’s my shadow doing
on its own,
out in the cold?
-- Ginka Biliarska (translated by the author and Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
November sadness –
a waterdrop
down the pane
after rain,
slimy mushrooms among
the rotting leaves
-- Ivelina Doicheva (transl. by the author and Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
winter solstice –
the fly's
halted flight
-- Ana Doicheva (transl. by the author and Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
summer here –
yet another ball reposing
on the roof
summer afternoon
the hammock’s shadow
sways the grass
bees gathering:
the white sleeves
embroidered with roses
muddy path –
roses, fresh after the rain,
keep their distance
-- Iliana Ilieva (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
puddles on the road
a belated cart
spatters the grass with stars
leaning over to
an acorn cup on the path –
upturned sky
-- Hristo ke Pella (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
Christmas morning
snowflakes falling
into my tea
funeral procession –
white all over,
the cherry tree
hot day
the peacock unfolds
his fan
lunch-time in the zoo
a line of ants aims for
the lion’s meal
-- Marica Kolcheva (transl. by Petar Tchouhov)
Sunday afternoon –
the keyboard sticky
with plum jam
coffee break –
on the back of a chair,
two jackets
-- Maya Lyubenova (transl. by the author)
a railway track
hardly breathing
-- Georgy Marinov (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
steamy horse
on the muddy road –
cool him off, snowflakes!
-- Georgy Marinov (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky and Petar Tchouhov)
the wind musses up
its shadow
continuous cawing –
a prodigal crow
has re-joined the flock
-- Axinya Mikhailova (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
a single cuckoo –
and lo, the chorus of frogs
has stopped!
-- Antoaneta Nikolova (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
cold morning –
in the packed tram, a woman
with a steaming basket
after this long
day of cleaning,
bright moon
-- Rositza Pironska (transl. by the author)
torrential rain –
at long last our tomcat
returns
a hornet –
just enough to bend
the petunia
-- Rositza Pironska (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
cold moon –
shadows within shadows
along the snowy road
-- Dimitar Stefanov (transl. by the author)
village
bit by a blizzard
then bandaged up by it
-- Dimitar Stefanov (transl. by Ludmila Kolechkova and Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
Autumn here –
the sun nestling among
the black branches
Rusty September sun –
thin moon crescent
cuts off birds’ singing
Shabby pine-tree –
through holes in its pockets
the wind wails
Look, among
a quantity of acorns,
the moon, also hanging!
Water recedes –
mussels start whispering
with thousands of lips
Glistening like silver
in the dried well,
dead moons’ bones
-- Edvin Sugarev (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
shooting gallery
the hunter wins
a teddy bear
streetlamp –
in a puddle, no room
for the moon
first snow
footprints leading
to the cobbler's house
reading a crime novel –
a dog chasing
his tail
Father’s Day
the little girl wants
a male doll
old bicycle
a raindrop falls from
the shed’s roof
-- Petar Tchouhov (transl. by the author)
fish market –
the deafening yelling
of the sellers
on the carpet
of violets,
the slim shadow of a pine
-- Rositsa Yakimova (transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky)
BRIEF HISTORY
OF THE BRIEF HISTORY OF BULGARIAN HAIKU
by Petar Tchouhov
At the beginning of the 1990s the renowned Bulgarian poet Ivan Metodiev founded a poetic circle called “Nava”, and soon started a magazine of the same name. This marked the beginning of his search for “Bulgarian haiku”. Trying to give a proper definition to the term “nava,” Metodiev used the word “explosion.” He gradually came to the conclusion that any short poetic form, or even part of a longer form, can be a nava. As for haiku, he considered them to be one of the possible forms of nava. Extravagant and provocative, the nava movement was too eclectic; in the end, its foundations turned out to be philosophical, or even mystical rather than literary.
Bearing this in mind, we can say that the “real”, or “organised”, if you like it better, haiku movement in Bulgaria started, in fact, not earlier than in 2000 when the Bulgarian Haiku Club was founded. Before that, writing of haiku and other short form poetry seemed to be a casual matter for most of the Bulgarian authors. The year of 2000 witnessed the birth of a true haiku community, whose members have since obtained a certain theoretical knowledge and acquired the necessary skills of haiku writing. Their presence is quite noticeable in modern days' Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Haiku Club has published several anthologies and individual books of poetry, and organised several haiku conferences and competitions. We now can say that it has found its niche in the literary and cultural life of Bulgaria, as well as abroad.
The first anthology published by the Bulgarian Haiku Club, Rain Seeds, appeared in 2001, immediately after the Club was founded. This book was the first of its kind in Bulgaria; its aim was to promote the emerging haiku movement in our country. As it happened, the editors included some three-liners by a few established Bulgarian poets, which, even by the most generous of estimates, could not be described as haiku. Moreover, none of the authors of those poems, some of which were not among the living any more, ever called them haiku. The editors of that volume obviously wanted to raise the prestige of the edition and, so to speak, to enter the Bulgarian literary scene with a bang.
Subsequent anthologies published by the Bulgarian Haiku Club were thematically organised, as was reflected in their titles: The Flower, The Rose, The Bird, The Road. In these anthologies we can find much less of the famous Bulgarian poets alleged to be authors of haiku than it used to be in Rain Seeds. Instead, some foreign poets were included, some of them unquestionably authoritative figures on the haiku scene. Their inclusion brought to the forefront the contrast between their works (especially if it was translated well enough) and the tercets by some of the Bulgarian haijin. Most of the latter were still searching for their haiku paths, but often went astray writing over-poetic pieces, in which they used personification, comparison, metaphors and abstractions. Inconsistent poeticisation of the images used in haiku writing is still is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the nascent Bulgarian haijin.
The Bulgarian Haiku Club now has a huge number of members, and keeps publishing different quality haiku collections by its members. This sometimes casts a shadow of discredit upon the way the genre is dealt with in our country. The lack of a well-developed haiku culture in our country can probably be blamed for a certain amount of confusion that often sets in when some of our authors try to distinguish a haiku from other sorts of short poems. No wonder that many of the Bulgarian readers - and even writers! - still hold on to the belief that all the three-liners, especially 5-7-5 verses, are haiku.
As a result of the indiscriminate acceptance of new members by the Bulgarian Haiku Club, a group of haijin broke away from the club in 2005, and subsequently founded the Sofia Haiku Club. This new organisation of poets has strict criteria for membership, and most of its members enjoy recognition in Bulgaria, as well as abroad. The most representative anthology of Bulgarian haiku published to date, Mirrors, was compiled and edited by Ludmila Balabanova, haiku poet and President of the Sofia Haiku club. This is a trilingual volume: all the Bulgarian haiku in this book appear alongside the English and the French versions of them. Incidentally, this anthology includes not only works by club members, but also haiku by a number of other Bulgarian authors.
Over the past few years several haiku conferences took place in Bulgaria. The most important was the Third World Haiku Association Conference held in Sofia and Plovdiv in 2005. More recently, the Sofia Haiku Club organised a conference that had “Haiku and Western Poetry” as its topic. Professor David Lanoue (USA) was a special guest at the conference, where, in addition to reading a paper, he also presented his haiku novel Haiku Guy, which had been translated into Bulgarian by then.
Strangely enough, there still isn't a single Bulgarian periodical or an e-zine dedicated to haiku. However one can find haiku poems on the pages of Literaturen Vestnik / The Literary Newspaper and also in the literary e-zine entitled Liternet. Both of them have special sections for haiku. This is the way things stand at this particular moment.
English translation by Angela Rodel and Anatoly Kudryavitsky
---------------------------<->----------------------------
dusk
a night-hawk circles
its shadow
village airport
we wait in the fog
for the hill to land
harvest moon
a dark cloud
furrows his brow
-- Ernest Berry (New Zealand)
a marmot nibbling
shadows
be colorful
leaf, it's your
moment!
at dawn...
the sky delivering
shadows
a mother washing
her newborn
-- Robert Wilson (USA/Philippines)
river song
a fisherman carries
his empty creel
city morning
willowherb seeds
caught on razor wire
fingerpost
a bee bumbles
through nettles
each to its own rock:
the goosanders;
the sounds of the river
-- John Barlow (England)
long day
tree shadows
from fence to fence
rise...
the moon barely clears
a backyard maple
I find myself weeding
my neighbor's garden
-- Marie Summers (USA)
rosy stripes move
across my dream
badlands of Almeria –
a beggar's
dark cracked hand
wires in the wind –
a Morse code of landing
pieces of ice
Main Street
the bright water dances
in a wheelbarrow
concrete hardened
with the print of a cat
who prowled here once, like me
-- Sean Lysaght (Ireland)
maple leaves
sunsets
between fingers
tiny white moth
pressed to the window –
rhythm of rain
ice-out
the snowbirds return
for haircuts
house sale
the man wants his pictures
to stay together
low cut t-shirt
bountiful cleavage –
man talks to it
sunshine's carpet –
gazania's
all wide eyed
hiking to Makapuu Point –
someone's name
carved in cactus
morning prayers
a temple elephant
salutes the deity
-- Gautam Nadkarni (India)
in a fountain
downhill to the Casino,
playful ducks
-- Mary O'Donnell (Ireland)
leaf-fall –
earth's begging bowl
overflows
nothing out the window
but myself
-- Stephen Farren (Ireland/Spain)
window rain
wetting those who went before
as I wait to go
-- J.D. Heskin (USA)
mid-morning sun
turning our chairs
bit by bit
-- Rose Hunter (Canada)
city street
the solitary oak
still green
thick fog
the faint honk
of a goose
in my dream
chasing sheep
getting tired
-- Lewis Ireland (England/Wales)
silence
green apples
dewing on wood
---------------------------<->----------------------------
The Wreck of SaySo
by Charles Hansmann (USA)
It's 9/11, 2002, the first anniversary. Gusts of 60 knots hit
bubbles
the submerged rocks
breathing
---------------------------<->----------------------------
Anniversary Getaway
by Zane Parks (USA)