Invitation to Renga With Me

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am returned.

I am envisaging a grand entrance here, a footman perhaps, announcing my arrival, or a both doors flung wide attention grab. That I actually slipped in quietly with an itsy bitsy haiku seems far more in keeping with my actual style. Either way, I am back after an absence of a couple of weeks in which I dedicated myself fully to a family holiday. I could do no different, it has been a very full trip, and a wonderful trip for it. But though I read most of a novel, I took no time to read on Vocal, and no time to write either.

With one exception.

On our penultimate night in Japan, spent in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu national park, we tumbled off the steaming bus into a dark, seemingly deserted settlement, plundered the sparse convenience store for some tofu and milk, and arrived at our lodging, a stand-alone “annex” accessed down an alley, alongside a graveyard, through a tall gate and into the darkness of a walled in garden. Inside, we warmed up in the hot-spring fed cedar wood bath, taking it in turns to pass through the too-hot water, ate some pasta we had brought with us with the tofu, and turned in for the night, watching the shadows of shrubbery through the paper walls and listening to the silence after many city nights.

The next morning, our last day in Japan, the rain had been pouring steadily for a few hours by dawn, and was forecast to go on doing so for the day. The absence of any noise beyond the rain on all sides, the dullness of the light, and the removal of the pressing rush that had characterised our trip all leant a contemplative air to the breakfast routine. I had begun to feel at once the longing for home and the sadness of the closing of a journey, and I reflected also on the time spent with my family, the gratitude I have for them, the marvel I found in my children and the sense too of their growing ever into their own lives and away from the one I create for them. I thought about the rain, the nurturance and the destruction of it, the different sounds of its falling onto different surfaces, the soft plops in the shrubbery, the gurgle of a drain, the hard taps on stone and tile, and the way rain feels different when we stand beneath it in different frames of mind – the way challenges feel different when we face them in different frames of mind, how they can both nurture and destroy too. I also thought about the laundry ahead, and how much of my book to save for the plane, and whether capybaras are susceptible to human viruses, it wasn’t all, you know, meaningful.

Then I slid open the internal shoji doors to find a writing desk set before a small, blooming cherry tree right outside the glass doors beyond, and I felt a calling. I believe it was entirely forgivable to indulge in a moment of pretentiousness and take five minutes while my son went through the hot bath I had run for myself to write a haiku for the moment. You can find that haiku, Yūgen, here.

However, and let me forewarn you now that I do not tell a story without including all the relevant details, shortly after I sat down to write I experienced a second calling. Given, as I am, to a degree of constipation whilst travelling, I do not ignore such callings when they arrive, and so I trotted off to occupy another seat in the house, this one pleasantly warmed – an innovation I had incorrectly assumed I would not enjoy – for my comfort. As one does, when one is desirous of brief diversion, I took my phone with me. And this was when I thought of you.

My intention had been to check on the correct form of a haiku. The syllable count I knew, though it transpires I did not know – something about a unit of sound which is comparable but not synonymous with a syllable. I wanted to clarify the other elements, the seasonal reference, the cutting word. But the rabbit hole I ventured down was far more exciting than the form.

Haiku, or historically hokku, appear to have originally been written as the opening stanza of a longer poem sequence called a Renga, in which alternating stanzas of the 5,7,5 syllable structure and a 7,7 structure are used. Now here is where it gets exciting. Here is where I thought of you. Renga are collaborative. Each stanza links to the growing poem, but they are composed by different authors. This could even be done live, a kind of poetry orgy which, like other collective intimate activities, may well sound more glorious that it actually is. I can already see me standing on the side lines wondering if I should try to sandwich a line in and feeling inadequate and unskilled.

But this is Vocal, we got time to think. So tell me you’re not excited? I have never been the most dedicated fan of haiku if I am honest, but new light has been cast most favourably here.

Here is what I propose.

I have written the opening stanza, I have set the scene. Who wants to make a Renga?

I’m not opening a challenge here, no suggestion that you find someone to work with and I give a gold star to the best collaboration. That might be fun, but I’m feeling connection not competition in this. If you want to join, simply check the progress, and write the next stanza on. If the last stanza was 7.5.7, yours must be 7.7, if the last was 7.7, yours is 7.5.7, and on it goes.

IF you want to join in, alert me to what you have done in the comments here, and I will add it to my opening in order of arrival – if I am behind, check the comments to see what the latest stanza is. I won’t republish my original haiku unless people join in, it would sit there like a hanging high five activating my rejection sensitivity, but IF anyone actually joins in, what I will do is republish the now Renga in its new form, and obviously I will put your name after your stanza.

And if you happen to know a whole heap more than me about Japanese poetry traditions and I’ve misunderstood it all completely – just let me have this, ok, I love the idea so much. (I mean, actually don’t, because I would also like to know, even if the reality isn’t as good as the sense I have made of it).

Come on, don’t leave me hanging.

Update: Renga is born - see here!