I write a fairly regular ‘essay’ in a series called RANSACKING THE PAST for display on The British Haiku Society Website. Sometimes I dredge books of my own early haiku for ones I could have done better (most of them) and write a critique, sometimes I look at old articles in Blithe Spirit (the BHS […]
ON ‘THE ESSAY’ Why do I call these posts ‘globs’? Because I wish to dissociate myself from the word ‘blogs’ – they are essays – but that’s a word distinctly out of fashion… From September1968, at the beginning of my time of being what’s called a ‘teacher’, I taught briefly (though it seemed like forever) […]
In Blithe Spirit Volume 10/2 (June 2000), Kai Falkman refers to a persuasive model he created – ‘The Pyramid of Meaning’ – which eventually became the title of the book published by Red Moon Press.He considers how Bashō’s old pond a frog jumps in the sound of water illustrates the model:- …the first line evokes […]
‘I believe I’m on a train going to Colchester…’ At the time of writing with a fountain pen that certainly was the case: I could feel the train wheels doing just what they were supposed to do and I felt the periodic jolts, slowings down and gettings faster. But to use the words ‘I believed […]
THE INTRODUCTION TO MY BOOK OF FOUND HAIKU FROM RICHARD JEFFERIES SOMETHING BEYOND THE STARS MORE OR LESS AS IT APPEARED IN 1993 Something Beyond the Stars may be of interest to at least three kinds of people: Richard Jefferies enthusiasts; adherents of Zen Buddhism and haiku fanatics. Assembling it, I found myself wearing all […]
I continue my exploration of the work of Hilaire Belloc in a determined effort to discover why, since many of his beliefs are so inimical to me, he continues to have a very special place in my intellectual life. He would no doubt have defined me as somebody possessed of a ‘…one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, […]
If It’s true that haiku is a state of mind, as I believe it is, the next question is: What is the right state of mind for writing haiku? But before that you must answer this question: What is mind? And that’s a question which pre-supposes that there is only one mind to bother about; […]
For nearly seventy years I’ve been what I suppose could be called a Belloc-fanatic. The question is – How could that be the case when he was a died-in-the-wool Roman Catholic, of an anti-pacifist, anti-vegetarian persuasion? I think I must have just relegated all that (on his account) to the category ‘unthink’, and (for myself) […]
I re-read Mark Epstein’s Thoughts without a Thinker. I made noteswhich gradually formed themselves into a poem. I laced it togetherwith haiku from a forthcoming book of my own; I suppose the result could be said to be a sort of haibun. ❁ in the prison of the mind we’re too busy survivingto confront the […]
Sometime in the 1940’s, somehow, I stumbled upon a radio programme called The Brains Trust. I think my mother perhaps used to listen to it. It must have been before 1948 because I was upset by media enthusiasm when, on 12th April 1948, Professor CEM Joad (1891-1953), a key figure in the programme, was convicted […]
