haiku – the awakened eye

muttering thunder : vol. 2

Posted on November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

Muttering Thunder 2015
The second muttering thunder annual is now available for free online viewing and download.

muttering thunder is the collaborative work of Tasmanian haiku poet and haiga artist Ron C Moss (whose work is featured in the artisans’ gallery on this site), and fellow poet Allan Burns.

In addition to a new gathering of nature-focused haiku by leading English-language haiku poets from around the world, it includes a reprint of a classic essay by Ruth Yarrow (“Environmental Haiku”) with a new afterword by the author and a wide-ranging conversation with poet, scientist, editor, and illustrator Cherie Hunter Day.

The poets featured express – each in their own unique voice – their wonderment, curiosity and compassion regarding the natural world, and the accompanying images bring an added depth of contemplation and beauty to the words.

To view the album and download a copy please click on the image below.

You might also be interested in these pages on haiku and haiga:

the way of haiga

disappearing in the haiku moment

a glimpse of a god

rosenstock & rosenstock

what does the poet see?

Posted on June 11, 2015June 12, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

Visual language is poetry in its own right, yet when a poet with the capacity to view a painting without bringing the common interpretation of its language to bear, other, deeper and wider dimensions of perception can arise. Poets sometimes employ another – usually visual – work of art as an entry point to their own creative expression and there’s a name for this form: ekphrasis. Often the resulting poems convey a deeper symbolism than is obvious; they can open up a surprising new dimension of meaning. (I wrote more about ekphrasis in this post about Howard Nemerov‘s poem, Vermeer.)

The work of haiku poet Gabriel Rosenstock has been featured on this site several times – he’s almost our unofficial poet-in-residence. (You’ll find links to his other pages below.) Well-known for his collaborative haiga with photographer Ron Rosenstock, Gabriel recently sent me these examples of his ekphrastic haiku. He includes three versions of his haiku – Irish, English and Japanese. (The latter are translations by Mariko Sumikura.)

The artworks are by Marc Chagall and Rene Magritte – details are included at the foot of the post.

From top:
Marc Chagall, Le Violoniste Bleu,1929
Marc Chagall, Cover, Souvenir Program for Ballet Russe, ca 1945
Rene Magritte, Le Mal du Pays (Homesickness), 1940
Rene Magritte, Golconda, 1953
Rene Magritte, L’Inondation (The Flood), 1928
Rene Magritte, The Pleasure Principle, 1937

Books by Gabriel Rosenstock

Blog: roghagabriel.blogspot.ie

disappearing in the haiku moment

a glimpse of a god

rosenstock & rosenstock

being in love with light

muttering thunder : an annual of fine haiku and art

Posted on November 17, 2014May 12, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

Tasmanian haiku poet and haiga artist Ron C Moss, whose work is featured in the artisans’ gallery on this site, has alerted me to the launch of his latest project, muttering thunder.

He and fellow poet Allan Burns have created their first annual of fine haiku and art. It’s a compilation that aims to “encourage the development of high-quality nature-oriented haiku in English”. The poets featured express – each in their own unique voice – their wonderment, curiosity and compassion regarding the natural world, and the accompanying images bring an added depth of contemplation and beauty to the words.

“muttering thunder is an annual of nature-focused haiku and art that will be published each November as an ebook, available for free online viewing and download from this page. The first annual, dedicated to the memory of Martin Lucas, presents approximately 100 previously unpublished haiku by almost 60 premier English-language haiku poets from around the world.

It also includes a reprint of a classic essay by Robert Spiess – Specific Objects in Haiku, and a wide-ranging interview with leading haiku and lyric poet Wally Swist.”

If you are a lover of haiku and appreciate sensuous and sensitive nature photography, I know you’ll be as delighted as I am at the launch of muttering thunder. The annual is a feast for the eyes and the heart – a fine companion for one’s contemplation of the sheer wonder of nature, and of our seamless intimacy with the fabric of the world.

You might also be interested in these pages on haiku and haiga:

the way of haiga

disappearing in the haiku moment

a glimpse of a god

rosenstock & rosenstock

submit to nature, return to nature

Posted on February 14, 2013May 22, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

New at the artisans’ gallery – artist and poet Ron C Moss

Ron C Moss is a visual artist and poet living in Tasmania, an island of rugged wilderness and solitary beaches. Tasmania’s natural wonders inspire his art, poetry and his continuing journey into the haiku arts.

“Submit to nature, return to nature,” wrote the seventeenth-century Japanese haiku-master Matsuo Bashō, thus capturing the beauty and simplicity of the haiku—a seventeen-syllable poem traditionally depicting a fleeting moment of a given season. The same can be said of the haiku’s more visual cousin, the haiga, which unites a haiku poem, written in calligraphy, with a simple painting.

In Bashō’s time, ‘haiga’ meant a brushed ink drawing combined with one of his single poems handwritten as part of the picture. In our day and age, haiga can be watercolor paintings, photographs or collages with a poem of any genre that is integrated into the composition. Sometimes the poem is handwritten or it can be computer generated, depending on the artist’s taste.

Source – www.poets.org

Ron C Moss: Starry Night

Starry night
what’s left of my life
is enough

I consider myself a student of the Zen arts, which have fascinated me from an early age. I enjoy the distilled conciseness of haiku, the exploration of art and mixed media, and sometimes I like to combine the two, as in the ancient tradition of haiga.

I try to bring a sense of contemplation into my work. Moments of stillness are important in our very busy lives and my path is to practice the way of art and haiku poetry.

– Ron C Moss

website

Also see Ron’s pages at the haiku foundation

Find more info about haiga at www.poets.org

Ron C Moss at the artisans’ gallery

Spira: expressing the inexpressible in clay and haiku

Posted on October 24, 2012May 22, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

Pure intimacy
parted by thought
becomes a self and world

– Rupert Spira

Rupert Spira - Deep Bowl

Deep bowl, embossed poem under Chun glaze
23 cm h x 23 cm d

… the writing helps create an unfamiliar space where the pot becomes the carrier of the text and the text the carrier of the pot. Words are supposed to float in two dimensions, but here the pot and the text have a strange pull between them. Is the pot commenting on the text?

Spira pushes these ideas hard: this is not about words as decoration. As with Kenzan, there is the knowledge of how to layer meanings, how to play with the images that words bring forth and with the feelings that forms create. By embossing his poems he takes the connection between reading with the eye and reading with the hand to another level of sensitivity.

Rupert Spira knows about the texture of words. This puts him amongst a wonderful, enlivening group of artists and poets from across the centuries. In his new pots with their words ‘embedded like a vein of quartz‘, to use his own phrase, we can see and feel something special is happening.

– Edmund de Waal

Rupert Spira - text detail from bowl

Detail showing embossed poem

Edmund de Waal is a leading British potter and writer on ceramics. (Edmund is also widely known for his international bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes)

This short extract is from: A single line of writing embedded like a vein of quartz
Read the entire essay at Rupert Spira’s website

Rupert Spira at the artisans’ gallery

nature’s eternity

every time I open my eyes

Love is the discovery that others are not others;
beauty is the discovery that objects are not objects.

– Rupert Spira