Five Haiku
Let me start with yet another attempt at defining what haiku is:
clean efficient language
clean efficient image
juxtaposition or cut
Language should be natural yet efficient. Like who wants to read something that sounds like an excerpt from a bad kung fu movie? Straight to the point. If it can go let it go.
The image(s) presented by language is where it’s at. Haiku can really be boiled down to the juxtaposition of two images. The cut this creates in good haiku affords the reader a sense of the world beyond them. A bracketing of the world. A sniff of things as things beyond cognition.
The pieces I have selected in this mixtape are by some of the finest writers working in the field. There are many more writers at this level - but I had to choose just five. This is not my top five - this is just five of the best that I’m aware of and enjoy.
One last thing most of these writers have written extensively on this craft and if this mixtape has struck your interest I strongly suggest looking further into their work.
The Invisible Circus
Forbids the clowns
To remove their make-up
the river
the river makes
of the moon
cherry blossoms fall —
you too must become
a hippo
following the frequencies of civilisations one snail one pen
giallo this restricted area my birthplace
About Mixtapes
These mixtapes are a way for the Neutral Spaces community to read and share each others writing.
The idea is to go through the site and select 5 pieces from 5 authors.
For Neutral Spaces authors, these get collected and you are given a space to write about your mini-collection.
On the page, the curator and the 5 selected authors have their website linked, together with the 5 external links for the chosen work.
If you run a journal, I would love to spotlight your site with 5 pieces, you can use the introduction to let people know what you're trying to do with your site.
If you want to put together a mixtape, e-mail me.