Deborah P Kolodji - Poetry Scrapbook and Random Musings

For the second year in a row, I am coordinating the Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest for the Yuki Teikei Society.

The Tokutomis founded the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society in San Jose, California, in 1975. Their vision was to nourish and foster the art of writing haiku in English using the traditional guidelines developed by haiku poets in Japan. As explained by Mrs. Tokutomi, in Japanese "Yu" means "having", "Ki" means "season", "Tei" means formal", and "Kei" means "pattern".

Therefore in the founders' view, "yuki teikei" haiku contains a season word and utilizes a three-line 5-7-5 pattern of syllables. In today's world, literary English language haiku is rarely written in 5-7-5 syllable patterns, even by members of the Yuki Teikei Society, however this contest continues to honor the vision of the founders of the society.

So, even though I generally encourage friends to forget about syllables when writing haiku, please think about writing a few 5-7-5 haiku with the following kigo in honor of the Tokutomis. You could win $100!

New Year: first reading, year of the dragon
Spring: swallows return, lengthening days
Summer: ants, summer’s end
Autumn: harvest moon, autumn sea
Winter: frost, bean soup

Contest haiku should be 5-7-5, containing one, and only one, kigo from the above contest kigo list. Prizes are $100 for First Place, $50 for Second Place, and $25 for Third Place.

The entry fee is $7 for three haiku. If you are submitting your haiku via us mail, put three haiku on a page. If you are submitting your haiku via e-mail to dkolodji@aol.com, your entire submission may be placed in the body of the e-mail.

Entry payment (checks made out to "Yuki Teikei Haiku Society") may be mailed to the contest chair, Deborah P Kolodji, 10529 Olive Street, Temple City, CA 91780 along with your paper submission, or can be made directly to the Yuki Teikei paypal account: yukiteikei(at)msn.com.

The deadline is May 31st. This is a postmark deadline, as well as an e-mail deadline.

Mary Torregrossa reads the winning haiku in the HaikuNow! Contemporary Category

On April 17, 2012, the Haiku Foundation sponsored readings across the country in honor of National Haiku Poetry Day. The 17th was chosen because it is in the middle of National Poetry Month and there are 17 sound symbols in a Japanese language haiku.

There were readings in Atlanta, Baltimore, Bangor, Boston, Dubuque & Mineral Point, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Princeton, San Francisco, Seattle, Shreveport, State College, Washington, DC, Winston-Salem.

I volunteered to coordinate the Los Angeles event, which took place in Sierra Madre at Bean Town Coffee Bar, 45 N. Baldwin Ave, starting at 7:30 p.m. The Haiku Open Mic was also an event of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival.

The reading was well attended, with about 24 people in the audience. Some additional Bean Town customers also stayed and listened for awhile. Musicians, Chris Wesley on guitar and Rick Wilson on xiao and shakuhachi, played during the entire reading, enhancing the audience's enjoyment of the haiku being read.

I was the emcee.

Since the event was sponsored by the Haiku Foundation, we were privileged to be able to announce the winners of the HaikuNow! haiku contest and the Touchstone Awards at the reading.

Sharon Hawley announced the HaikuNow! winners and read the winning haiku in the Traditional Category, which was judged by Jane Hirshfield. Mary Torregrossa announced the HaikuNow! winners and read the winning haiku in the Contemporary Category, which was judged by Jim Kacian. Chris Wesley read and announced the winners in the Innovative Category, also judged by Jim Kacian. Samantha Henderson announced the Touchstone Awards and read the winning haiku. The contest announcements and readings of winning haiku were interwoven between open mic readers.

Open mic readers included Deborah P Kolodji, Greg Longenecker, Peggy Castro, Kathabela Wilson, William Hart, Kimberly Esser, Amir Sapir, Kimberly Cobián, Lisa Verlo, Eric Lawson, Marie Lecrivain, James Won, Steve Hardy, and Mark. Mary Torregrossa and Jie Tian read haiku by Basho, Buson, and Issa, as translated by Robert Hass in The Essential Haiku. Christine also read a haiku from The Essential Haiku, in both Japanese and English. Kimberly Cobián read a haiku she had written in Romani, as well as its English translation.

I finished up the evening by reading some haiku by Haiku Foundation president, Jim Kacian, as well as a haiku by Jack Kerouac. (I ended up reading Jack Kerouac accidentally, because I was reading poems by Jim from my hardback copy of the 3rd edition of Cor's Haiku Anthology, and I turned the page to Kerouac's famous dead fly in the medicine cabinet haiku, reading it before it dawned on me that I had shifted to Kerouac! But, it's a cool poem, so I'm happy I read it.)

I always appreciate attending ConDor because the organizers are so speculative-poetry-friendly! ConDor is down in San Diego, but I always prefer it over attending Loscon in Los Angeles because as a poet, I am made to feel so much more welcome.

This year, as we have in the past several years, we had a two hour block on Saturday. There was a poetry workshop at 4 p.m. and a poetry reading at 5 p.m.


Workshop panelists: David Lee Summers, Denise Dumars, Nancy Ellis Taylor,Samantha Henderson, Deborah P Kolodji, Deborah Flores

This year's theme was "Men In Black: Aliens, Conspiracies, & Feds, Oh My!" which meant some fun panels on UFOlogy and debunking conspiracies, including a powerpoint presentation by UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer. This included profiles of various UFO conspiracies such as an alleged CIA cover-up to hide the fact that Barack Obama has been to Mars. (You just can't make some of this stuff up!) Men in Black creator, Lowell Cunningham, was the guest of honor.

For our poetry workshop, we riffed off the conspiracy theme and used it for one of our prompts. For the last several years, we've been doing variations of a prompt mash-up, where participants are given prompts from various items that have nothing to do with each other, just to see what happens when they are juxtaposed together. This year, each participant received three prompts: a conspiracy theory (Grassy Knoll, the Princes in the Tower, Princess Diana murder, Origin of AIDS, UFO coverup, Sky ChemTrails, etc), a quote from Shakespeare, and an astronomical object.

I ended up with "The Moon Landing is a Hoax," "the Play's the Thing," and "rogue planet." Oddly enough, they seemed to fit together and I was able to write my first speculative poem in a long drought of speculative poetry writing. (I am not going to post it here, because I'd like to work on it a bit more and actually submit it somewhere!)

We also read a section from The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes regarding synesthesia. Synesthesia is when one sensory perception is expressed in terms of a different sense, for example "I know the seven fragrances of the rainbow" from The Blindman by May Swenson or "green wind" from Romance Sonambulo by Federico García Lorca. The object of the exercise was, if possible, to use an example of synesthesia in the prompt mash-up poem.

I used "the smell of gray" and "sharp lighting" as elements of synesthesia in my poem.

After the writing session, we shared the poems we had written. Charles Nelson prefaced his poem with a testamonial. He told us that he had attended the ConDor Poetry Workshop last year and was so inspired that he continued to write and just received an acceptance letter for an upcoming poem in Space and Time.

The poetry workshop was followed by a poetry reading in a read-around format. We kept on reading poems until we ran out of time. I don't know about my fellow poets, but I could have done that all night long! It was wonderful listening to everyone's poetry.

Week #4 finishes up the alphabet prompts....

#20 talus

echoes
of old arguments…
scree slope

#21 umbrella

rain outside
rain inside
cocktail umbrellas

#22 vent

dead tree forest
a strong smell of sulfur
from the steam vent

#23 wig

old beehive wig
my neighbor shows off
her breast reconstruction

#24 x

late night Scotland Yard
Mr. X and I
in the same space

#25 yellow

yellowed lace doily
my grandmother’s recipe
for peach cobbler

#26 zip

camellia festival
the line for the zipper
winds around the coin toss

My responses to this week's haiku word prompts were influenced by a business trip to Colorado. (Brrrr)


#13 mountain

snow moon
cell phone reset
to mountain time

#14 nachos

corn chips
softened by warm cheese
regret

#15 opera

silent opera
the way sun glistens
on snow

#16 pool

7 degrees F
and yet dawn
pools in the snow

#17 queue

missing page
stuck in a printer queue
the name of her illness

#18 rattle

morning visitor
the rattle of dry leaves
outside my window

#19 sandal

freshly painted toes…
salon flip-flops,
pinker

The prompt for the 20th is particularly challenging. It is talus.

The Southern California Haiku Study Group will be meeting today at the Pacific Asia Museum.



Naia will be our featured reader. Naia is the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America and long-time member of the Southern California Haiku Study Group. Her work has appeared in haijinx, Modern Haiku, frogpond, The Heron's Nest, LYNX, Acorn, SxSE, Redmoon Anthologies, Contemporary Haibun Online, Simply Haiku, Ribbons, Yuki Teikei Anthologies, Haiku Headlines, Tidepools, Other Voices International Project Volume 20, Tempes Libre, the HNA 2009 Anthology Into Our Words, Words & Pictures, Southern CA Haiku Study Group Anthologies, Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, WHCReview, Cordite Poetry Review, HSA Anthologies, American Haibun & Haiga Volume 3 (2002), Hermitage 2005 and Hermitage 2006, 2001 Basho Festival Anthology (Japan), 2001 Shiki Anthology by the Ehime Culture Foundation in Japan, Southern California Haiku Study Group Anthologies, and "Raku Teapot: Haiku" a Book/CD compilation of poets' haiku recorded in their own voices.



Greg Longenecker will be presenting a program, "Basho, His Life and Haiku". Long interested in haiku, Greg first began writing his own haiku in the mid-1990's. This led to a greater study of haiku in order to improve his writing. Joining the Haiku Society of America in the early 1999 and, later, the Southern California Haiku Study Group, he began publishing haiku in 2002. Basho, of course, has always been of interest to him. Greg's work has appeared in Frogpond, Acorn, Mariposa, Geppo, and various Haiku Society of America, Yuki Teikei, and Southern California Haiku Study Group anthologies.


Bring a haiku to share. The meeting starts at 2 pm. The museum is located at 46 N. Los Robles, Pasadena.

As February continues to move along, I'm pleased to report that I have continued to stay on track on writing a haiku a day.

Michael Dylan Welch's daily NaHaiWriMo prompts on the NaHaiWriMo Community Facebook page have helped me maintain the discipline.

Writing to prompts isn't for everyone, but I find that it loosens up memories in my mind and brings them back to the surface, allowing me to re-experience those moments in my life.

Here is this week's crop.

Feb 6: frame

lowest low tide
a pair of wire-framed glasses
half-buried

Feb 7: grief

lock of hair
from his last haircut
deep winter

Feb 8: hat

hat against desert sun
my arm brushes
the cholla

Feb 9: ice

the heat between us
cooling off…
iced coffee

Feb 10: jam

last jar
of her apricot jam
spring thaw

Feb 11: kitchen

kitchen sink bubbles
a toddler on the floor
with pots and pans

Feb 12: laundry

stain sticks
a singer in the band
on scrub board

The prompt for Feb 13 is mountain. Stay tuned.

Some writers think in plots. I think in images. While I have managed to write a short story here and there, the novel continues to escape me.

As an alternative for those of us who don't think in novels when NaNoWriMo comes around in November, there is NaHaiWriMo for February!

Since February is the shortest month, why not celebrate it by writing in the shortest genre of poetry - haiku! Even if you are late to the party, it is still not too late to commit to writing a haiku a day for February.

There is a facebook community where a daily prompt is given. Michael Dylan Welch is posting the prompts under the graphic for February on the facebook page. Most people are also posting the prompt with their haiku, so it's not hard to figure out the prompt. He has decided to do the prompts in alphabetical order.

There is a bit of an overlap in time zones. Poets are participating from various parts of the world, so while I'm finishing my haiku for February 5th, people elsewhere are already working on the prompt for February 6th.

There is also a facebook group for haiku in French and one for haiku in Spanish.

Here's a wrap up of what I've written so far:

Feb 1 - apple

apple peels
by the slow cooker
an unfilled prescription

Feb 2 - boat

cold moon
the boat from Catalina
ten minutes late

Feb 3 - catfish

mud cats
lurk in the shallows
my broken line

Feb 4 - dog

trip to the ER
my mother's springer spaniel
keening

Feb 5 - egg

I talk you talk
neither of us listens...
scrambled eggs

I hope this will inspire you to try it yourself! For those who want a head start (or are in a different time zone), the prompt for February 6th is frame.

Yesterday's reading at the South El Monte Library was a program for the library's Adult Book Club. Here is a group photo of the Adult Book Club and Emerging Urban Poets.



Also, a video of me reading "Returning to Earth" has surfaced on YouTube, courtesy of Don Kingfisher Campbell. The sound is a bit faint. (Does anyone have software that can help amplify the sound?)

http://youtu.be/TENRjsGwW7w

I went to a small poetry reading sponsored by the Nuvein Foundation at the South El Monte Library tonight, reading from the latest Emerging Urban Poets chapbook with Don Kingfisher Campbell, Michael J. Cluff, Mina V. Kirby, Radomir Vojtech Luza, and Mary Torregrossa.

My contribution to the chapbook is the following:

Returning to Earth

Your reaction to my words
as unpredictable
as a fallen weather satellite's debris field
as we meet
          at the High School Reunion
          the lunch with old co-workers
          the chance encounter with an old
          lover at Starbucks
I/you have
        aged too much/too little
        are more/less successful
        have gained/lost weight
We smile
        about the old days
        talk about how good it was
neither trying to hide the lies.

In the heat of re-entry we lose
        who we have become

- Deborah P Kolodji
2011 Emerging Urban Poets chapbook, Oct 2011