David died on the 6th November 2020 aged 94 Shiki said that in order to write a haiku a good mental discipline to follow was to look down at the violet at your feet and then look up at the distant mountain. David’s version of this might have been to take infinite care of a […]
The Railway Bridge after a painting by Brooke Farrar There he stands, the well-known figure Of the total stranger with his back Towards me, leaning on the parapet Of the secure suburban bridge. He stares along the permanent, white Summer rails, the expanding iron thoughts That curve into perspective, signalling The distance and himself, and […]
I was on a train to London the other day. Sitting opposite & next to me were a couple of blokes on their way to Twickenham to watch a rugby match. When they’d run out of their own conversation about things happening in the construction industry, the more obviously affable of the two turned to […]
In September 1994 I went to Romania to attend an International Haiku Conference. It was a very memorable time. wanting to pocket the sound of this Black Sea dawn I must turn my back The highlight for me was a performance of two of my musical settings of haiku by David Cobb and James Kirkup. […]
Why do we spend so much time putting things into words? Stick with this till the end and you’ll find out what the practical implications of asking such a question are and why non-wording might be useful. The Art of Non-wording may help the words you use and what you hear of the words of […]
‘A haiku a day keeps the doctor away…’ James Kirkup [RIP]—who also said, ‘I follow no path; the path follows me…’ At the beginning of 2012 there was talk on Facebook of putting up a haiku a day for a year. Half way through the month of January I decided to give the idea a […]
We exist in a world run by sleeping people; people virtually dead to any sensible perception of what they imagine to be going on; they may appear to make great and important ‘decisions’ on our behalf in some kind of democratic charade but because we ourselves are equally asleep we cannot see that we are […]
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