WYRD WORKS
108 BREATHS
Mark Wollacott was born in 1980 in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, and grew up there, but has spent most of his 20s in Japan and Hungary. He studied at Europe’s smallest university, the University of Wales, Lampeter and played badly for their cricket team. He was assistant manager at Cirencester Millets until it burnt down. He spent five years teaching English in Osaka, Japan. He has written for Kansai Time Out, Kansai Scene and The Austin Post. His first short story The Spare Room was published in the For Tohoku charity anthology in 2011.He now spends most of his time writing for scraps to avoid the dole queue, arguing with his cat and wishing Aston Villa would not sell their best players.
Mark is currently working on a series of books. First is “Origins of the J-Verse,” which is an introduction to Japanese poetry. He is also working on a semi-biography of his time in Japan entitled “Memoir of a Git” and his first speculative fiction novel “Blank Jack.”
108 BREATHS
Mark Wollacott
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Mark Wollacott
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Book design and cover photograph by Mark Wollacott
Cover Photo: West Pier, Taketomi Island, Japan
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1. Summer (1-22)
6. Haibun 3: Southern Fried Bamboo
Foreword
Discipline and creativity are rarely principles that successfully combine, but the art of Haiku requires the perfect balance of the two. It was a great honour to be asked to write this foreword for Mark Wollacott’s 108 Breaths, as I know that he has that balance and is perfectly poised to present his work in this genre.
Whilst many modern poets are abandoning the conventional rules of meter and rhyme, haiku has steadfastly endured as an art that should be respected in its ancient form. Mark’s work has always been intelligently and thoughtfully constructed, without losing the all-important spark of magic that any written work should contain, in order to transport the reader into the words. His enthusiasm for conveying his thoughts into poetic form is obvious and his eagerness for people to be able to examine, deconstruct and key together his words is cleverly contained, without being intimidating to any idle eye.
And of course, it is also important that there is a freedom to express the evolution of this form. Language, the Arts and indeed we as people, need to be able to direct contemporary issues and social structures into our work, in order to keep the nature of creativity alive. Writing is no different from any of the other Arts that have taken the experience of the past in order to honour it with a new breath of life that takes it into the modern age.
As you step through this book and experience the road it will carry you along, I am certain that you will appreciate the immense amount of work involved but more than that, I am certain that you will wish to join me in congratulating Mark for this wonderful achievement, which he now shares for our enjoyment. Return to Top
Kiersty Boon, 2011
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been made without the dear support of my Diana. Where would I be without you? Don’t answer because I know your answer will be too modest. I know the haiku are not quite akin to the classical haiku you studied and prefer, but I’m glad they have raised smiles and some warm fuzzy feelings nonetheless.
Special praise should also be reserved for Brighton’s Poet Busker, Kiersty Boon who has been a constant source of inspiration and consolation for the past half-decade or more. Wulfstan Crumble and Narnie are still alive and kicking despite it all. Thank you also for writing a brilliant foreword.
Thank you too to my first proof reader and editor, Rebecca Mayglothling. My fellow stay-at-home writer, struggling against the system and apathy. You know I’ll always be here to listen or offer advice just as much as you, even if we end up ignoring each other.
I would like to also thank my fellow poet, Ebby for her unique and inspiring poems, to the memory of Paul Squires; the inspiration from down under, and to the members of the Osaka Writers Group 2008-09, especially Erin, Dangerfield, Mindy, Katie, Carl and Rianna. I’d also like to thank my close friends from near and afar, the four Helens, Barbara, Justyna, Beilei, Marcella, Agata, Dominique and Raffy. Thank you for believing in me when I wouldn’t.
This collection has been written and compiled with peaceful intent. Many haiku are just as they seem while others reflect something a little deeper. They have been arranged to provide a kind of story of my five years in Japan. It is my sincerest hope that you enjoy them and find these little nuggets of misinformation as interesting as I do. Return to Top
A haiku is but a single breath: a moment captured in a deceptively simple format that is preserved forever. Perhaps the haiku was the world’s first camera, a literary sketch. While originally from Japan, they have since spread across the globe and have been translated into, or composed using most of the world’s languages. The question for purists is how many of them are true haiku. Does such a thing even exist?
Basho expelled his most famous breath on a frog, or on a pond depending upon your point of view. Sokan would, if given the chance, have put a handle on the moon to make himself a new fan. Speaking of moons, Onitsura saw a moon so beautiful he assumed the whole world would pause and paint a picture. He, however, chose to paint a picture with words. If you think about it, in Japanese writing a good haiku is akin to art because of the immense beauty of a well rendered kanji using ink ground from a stone and applied with the right brush.
In short, a haiku is a style of Japanese poetry. At its most basic it is made up of 17-on divided into three lines. The first line has five on, the second seven and the final line has five again. A true haiku has a seasonal word (Kigo), something immobile like an object or location, and a movement. Thus, Basho gives us his frog-pond haiku:
Furu ike ya
kawazu tabikomu
mizu no oto
If you count the number of syllables or sounds, you would realize there are 17. This is where it gets a little tricky in Japanese. Both Japanese alphabets, hiragana and katakana, are divided into the usual 5 vowels, one solo consonant (n) and 39+ consonant-vowel pairings. This means “fu-ru” is two syllables as well as two letters, however, Osaka is actually four symbols, as you require two Os at the beginning to render O-o-sa-ka. Similarly, “Shin,” the first element of names like Shintaro, is two letters (shi+n), but only one sound.
This means a haiku is not, strictly speaking, 17 syllables in English either. You can see where this might be a problem in English. It would be like taking Twitter and removing 123 characters from its capacity. Many people still use the magic number, 17, because it is safe and well known, but it gives the composers of English haiku a distinct advantage over their Japanese counterparts. This is because there is simply a wider range of monosyllabic words in the English language. You can quite easily compose a haiku with 17 single-syllable words. Some composers create haiku with 17 syllables, but others go more extreme in order to get a more traditional feel and use as few as 10. Therefore, it is ok to use between 10 and 17 syllables in an English haiku, thus we get Basho’s pond-frog:
An old pond
the frog jumps
sound of water
As you’ll note, there are only 9 syllables in this one with a 3-3-4 formation, the kind of formation Manchester United seem to play sometimes. This is my literal translation of Basho’s haiku. The “old pond” is the place as well as the kigo, and the frog jumping is the action. As with many great haiku, the final line is what makes you think. Let me ask you one question, did the frog jump in the pond?
Some may argue that the decline and fall of the haiku began as soon as barbaric foreigners discovered them. Those uncouth wretches, who did not know they should stand in the gutter when samurai walked past, could not be trusted to preserve the beautiful perfection of the Japanese haiku. While it is true that the form was exported to the rest of the world and tampered with, it is also true that there were splits within haiku all the way back to the disputes between Teitoku and Soin.
If you think of quiet, peaceful and rather staid haiku, then you are thinking of the version of haiku as practiced by Teitoku. However, in the 17th century, the followers of Soin, known as the Danrin School, began to bring humour into the haiku. Suiryu, a Teitoku man to his marrow, complained that the Danrin poets were using base words and heaven forbid, new words. The split highlights how haiku is not a set-in-stone kind of poem, just as the sonnet is not limited to the Shakespearean, but also has the Miltonic and the Petrarchan versions to add variety.
A shallow pond
the frog jumps
snap
The haiku developed, according to Kenneth Yasuda (Japanese Haiku), out of a witty retort or coupling known as the katauta. Each line had 17 syllables and was usually, but not always, a question followed by an answer. This in turn developed into other poems with similar forms such as the sedoka, choka, haikai, renga, hoka and tanka. The problem of rigidity in the approach to haiku comes not from antiquity, but from a fossilisation of the form. This is a common problem to Japanese arts, be they the regimented lists of Noh plays or the exacting rules for ikebana and shodo.
English haiku, therefore, are quite right to break out of their straitjackets and find a very English, American, or Australian feel to them. As Alex Kerr points out in Dogs and Demons, many of the practitioners of Japanese arts that are closest to the origins of those arts are the non-Japanese who shrug off rigidity and embrace inspiration and fluidity. This is my justification, at least, for the creativity that I hope I have added to haiku.
These poems are also mixed in with a wide variety of other haiku-like poems. Some of these include the more humorous and human senryu. This is seen as the final form of the comical haikai so derided by Suiryu in 1679, but actually datable as far back as the Kokinshu in 902. The senryu follows the same basic 17-on format with the same three lines. However, there are no catalogues of acceptable terms and no seasonal words. They are, in fact, like shortened versions of Ishikawa Takuboku’s tanka.
Senryu look at human foibles and make fun of them when comical haikai, but can also be more reflective and self-critical (when moving more towards Ishikawa’s tanka). There is no real limit to the subject matter. Perhaps they are an internal moment. The haiku is inspired by seeing, hearing or smelling something (usually a combination of several), but the senryu is more of an internal feeling or realization.
Finally, before finishing this mini-essay, a word on haibun. This book contains four haibun. The first (actually the last one here: Takamatsu Pier) was written for an Australian and an American friend of mine. It was later rejected for publication by a haibun magazine and so I have included it here, as it is part of my Japan experience. A haibun mixes prose with haiku/senryu. There is no form or format, but there are usually haiku every one or two paragraphs and haibun can take the form of stories, autobiography, diary or explanation.
1
Tarmac rushing up
one-hundred frozen faces,
view from the nose cam
2
Humid Tokyo,
crowds going inside for
a breath of fresh air
3
Sun, then divine wind,
the first Mushroom cloud,
silent screams reign
4
Sunny Kokubu
bleached away until life,
sometimes fades to white
5
Night time falls at last,
stars hidden by the modern world
and grey clouds too
6
Distant mountains
clad in honeydew mist
or, a summer’s haze
7
Dragonflies swish swoosh
before my mountain bike,
Yamato River
8
Jingle, sweet jingle,
I rush to the ice cream’s tune
and find a trash man
9
Hot inside and out,
not a cloud in the blue sky,
empty headiness
10
Butterflies settle
their feet on the windowsills,
time to teach
11
Your black eyes implore
me as the sun’s many swords
paint our faces red
12
In the storm’s own wake,
watercolours of the world,
paint strokes of the gods
13
Oily blue on white,
cloudy battleships form up,
apocalypse sun
14
Stranded golden gates
as the demented ghosts come,
bye bye McDonalds