This blog

The poem I posted yesterday was written in 2010 following a visit to the battlefields and cemeteries of the Somme area in 2009. It was published in Snakeskin in 2010, and included in my 2012 collection The propriety of weeding (Red Squirrel Press, 2012).  I posted it here at the request of a friend on Twitter. I suppose there might have been a techie solution to the 140-character limit, but what I came up with was to post the link to the blog post in the tweet.

However, I'm wondering what to do next with this blog. I've finished more than 100 poems so far in 2014, and many of them have been posted in a private, closed Facebook group as drafts. In a sense that group has taken the place of this blog as a place for posting drafts for comments.

I'm thinking I might convert it to a blog for previously published, copyrighted poems I want to draw attention to. Or I could use it for events, readings and so on - things I don't usually post on my other blog (Sunny Dunny).

So I'll develop my ideas, and eventually make this a public blog again.

Poem for Remembrance Day 2014

Missing


David Will was the first name I read,
same name as my first son.
I breathed again after a long gasp.
Missing, and the date and place.
Regiment: Gordon Highlanders of course,
because that’s the one they all joined,
the ones from Buchan, the hinterland
behind the coastal towns, places
my forebears lived and laboured.

Remains not found or identified,
fragments of anonymous bone,
strips of nameless flesh,
meat for the trench rats, a red stain
in the puddles that quickly dribbled
into pools of mud, churned by incoming shells
or the boots of marching men.

John Will was next, and in the lists
another John, four Jameses,
a Duncan (my other son’s name),
two brothers, William and George.
Grandmother’s maiden name produced
a new batch, adding Mutch to Will,
folk from Strichen and the Newburgh..

Twenty-five names in all, men who travelled
from Huntly to Ypres, Ellon to Cambrai,
and did not come home. My grandfather made shoes
in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, never spoke
about his service, but he marched back
and fathered my father, the year after
hostilities ended, but didn’t.

Walled gardens feature frequently
in this landscape, each with their strange crops:
ranks of identical upright slabs
with simple inscriptions, books of lists.
Planting poppied crosses doesn’t work for me;
commemorating isn’t what I want to do.
I try to make personal connections, but I can’t.

That happened later in a farmer’s field.
A drainage ditch in the chalky soil
had opened an unmapped trench,
and in the bottom we found bullets,
a belt buckle, and a few white bones:
a shiny rib, and the smooth head of a femur.

Copyright © Colin Will 2010
Published in The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012

What is haibun? Version 2

This is the introduction to The Book of Ways, to be published in Autumn 2014 by Red Squirrel Press.

What is haibun?

Japanese literature began with the tanka poem form in the 8^th century, the first novels (by Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu) in the 10-11^th centuries, and the verse form renga in the 11^th century, from which hokku and haiku later emerged. Haibun evolved from haiku.

The best known example of the form is Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi – Narrow Road to the Interior – a poetic record of a journey made in 1689. His friend and fellow poet Sora accompanied him on part of his journey, and they composed together in the manner of renga – linked verse – with Basho’s narrative. Many other Japanese writers have used the form since then, but its popularity in the West dates from the late 20^th and early 21^st century, when European and American writers discovered it for themselves.

So what exactly is it? The magazine Haibun Today has on its website a collection of diverse and often contradictory definitions. Basho simply says it is haikai no bunsho – writing in the style of haiku. Shiki’s followers equate it with shaseibun – sketching in words. Most commentators agree on two things: they should contain prose written in the spirit of haiku; and they should contain, often as a conclusion, a haiku. The haiku should parallel but not epitomise the prose. ‘The prose becomes the narrative of an epiphany, while the haiku is the epiphany itself.’ (Bruce Ross: Narratives of the Heart, World Haiku Review, vol 1, 2002)

Most haibun contain one haiku, some more, fewer none. The prose section is often, but not always, the record of a journey, real or allegorical. That has led some to characterise the haibun as a waybook, and that is the reason for the book’s title. The risk is that a haibun collection becomes a series of travel notes, which I have tried hard to avoid: this is poetry.

You may think that, given the flexibility of the form, that anything goes. Far from it. As with any other poetic form, there are techniques – things which work and things which do not. There are skills to learn, and styles to develop. There are fashions too, especially in Western haibun. There’s a recent tendency in some quarters to drastically shorten the prose sections, but I can see no logical reason for this, and it loses a lot of the poetry. The length of a haibun should depend solely on the needs of the narrative.

Some of these haibun relate to wanderings in other countries, but I’ve also included poems written at home in Scotland, together with poems reflecting my scientific background.

In this collection some haibun contain tanka and other short verse forms rather than haiku, but by and large the structure of prose plus one or more haiku has been adhered to, as has the 5-7-5 haiku structure. Some haiku are non-seasonal; some are closer to senryu, and many do not have the kireji – the cutting word. But there is precedent; Basho himself sometimes experimented in these ways. ‘In the spirit of haiku’ usually means present tense, direct speech, and first person narrative. I have mostly followed this, but occasionally I’ve used past tense. Sometimes I’ve used second person, making them conversations with my wife Jane, my companion along many of these ways. I think the form is robust enough to accommodate such diversions.

The collection has been cast in four parts, but the boundaries between them are flexible. The first poem is a non-linear reflection on places I’ve been, things I’ve seen or thought about, and forms an introduction to the first section. The second section features Scotland, wilderness (including mountains), and some travels; the third adds more travels plus some science-influenced poems; the fourth contains the most personal poems.

Colin Will

Hawthornden Castle and Dunbar

November 2013 – February 2014

Too easy

I don't normally write poems about writing, but this one wrote itself this morning.

Too easy

Once I wrote in language

dense as earth, full of words

gleaned from years of learning, reading,

and fancy turns hand-picked

from the poet’s holdall of tricks –

allit-, asson-, half-rhyme, and bucket-loads

of metaphor.

One critic said I was ‘showing off’

but I wasn’t. I took delight

in the possibilities of words, sounds,

ideas, special effects.

Still, the injustice stung.

I’ve pared down, am leaner,

but maybe I’ve gone too far;

too many simple gifts, too many

babies slipped through the shower’s

hair filter, too many straight lines.

What do you think? You were there.

What do you think?

Colin Will

01/01/2014

Changes for 2014

I started this as a private blog for NaPoWriMo 2013, so I could date-stamp the poems without making them public, which would have infringed the 'no prior publication' condition set by many editors.
However, I've decided to make it public, so I can put drafts up.

I'll also put up information, workshop tips, prompts and exercises here.

Changeable

This one came from last night's 10-minute exercise at the Dunbar Writers. My prompt was 'hot and cold', and this is what I came up with. It's unedited.


Changeable

It was a warm morning
then a front went through
leaving hours of cool showery air
trailing behind it.

We had lunch in the garden
sitting at the table
with the wine, salad,
fruit and cheese. Balmy,

and then, little by little,
the wind rose, the sky
greyed over, and we were back
in the Pleistocene, felt like it.

The first spots of rain
evaporating on the paving,
released that smell of warm stone,
and then the spots stayed, grew.

We rushed inside, in a flummox
of plates, glasses, salt and pepper,
bowls of salads and boards of cheese,
to continue our meal inside.

You can’t recreate a picnic indoors,
the light’s not there, the sunshine
and the warmth gone, the windows
streaming with rain, chilly.

Colin Will
09/05/2013

The first post-April poem

I've got an idea for a title for my next collection, due 2015. It's The bacon bookmark. (This actually happened, when I was a junior librarian working in Bathgate). I just need to write the poem now. I know how it will end:

It could've been worse,
there was no brown sauce on it,
and it could've been a fried egg.

(We had love letters, French letters, oily bus tickets, and suspiciously brown scraps of paper returned from branches and centres, so there is a poem there waiting to be written).

However, sitting on the train in Waverley Station, waiting for it to leave for Plymouth via Dunbar and other station stops, as the 'train managers' now call them, this poem came:

[Poem removed for copyright reasons]

I've since discovered the statue is called Everyman, he doesn't have a beard, and he has brown skin. So I may need to edit this one later.