Rengay Through the Seasons
A Year in Rengay (September 2007 - August 2008)
This project was started on September 2, 2007 by Masago (Vaughn Seward) and when finished will consist of a set 52 weekly Rengay poems. A Rengay consists of six linked haiku that support a common theme. For more information about Rengay, see the following notes by Joan Zimmerman:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/rengay.htm
Most Rengay are written collaboratively with two or three participants. They can also be written by one or six individuals. The rengay in this project will primarily be written solo (by Masago). However, twelve of them, one for each month of the year, will be done as a joint effort with different guest rengay/haiku friends. Each day of the week a different verse from that week's Rengay will be posted to Masago's Haiku blog:
http://masago-no-haiku.blogspot.com/
On the last day of the week the following will be posted: a title, the theme(s), linking details, and technical notes. The following is an archive of the project worksheets posted to date:
Week
|
Date Posted |
Haijin Partner
|
Season |
Title / Archive Link |
Technical
Notes
|
Theme 1 |
Theme 2 |
Theme 3 |
Theme 4 |
1 |
Sep 2, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Autumn |
Popsicle Stick |
Notes for #1 |
Needing Clean-up |
|
|
|
2 |
Sep 9, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Autumn |
Faint Thump |
Notes for #2 |
Barely Perceptable |
Senses |
|
|
3 |
Sep 16, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Autumn |
Pile of Spruce |
Notes for #3 |
Conifers |
Accumulations |
|
|
4 |
Sep 23, 2007 |
Karina Klesko |
Early-Autumn |
The Storm, Now Over |
Notes for #4 |
Clinging |
Red / Black
|
|
|
5 |
Sep 30, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Autumn
|
Remnants |
Notes for #5 |
Remnants |
Smaller |
Lodged |
|
6 |
Oct 7, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Autumn
|
Over the Rail |
Notes for #6 |
Detached
|
|
|
|
7 |
Oct 14, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Autumn |
Tinkle of an Earring |
Notes for #7 |
Unintended Outcomes |
|
|
|
8 |
Oct 21, 2007 |
Daniela Bullas |
Mid-Autumn |
At the Mirror |
Notes for #8 |
Human-related Fakeness |
Old / New |
|
|
9 |
Oct 28, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Autumn |
Under a Sleeve |
Notes for #9 |
Revealed
|
Food-Related |
|
|
10 |
Nov 4, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Late-Autumn |
Heading South |
Notes for #10 |
V-A-C-A-T-E |
Homes |
|
|
11 |
Nov 11, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Late-Autumn |
Crust of White |
Notes for #11 |
Transformation |
Flatness |
Colours |
|
12 |
Nov 18, 2007 |
Max VerHart |
Late-Autumn |
The Graying Hare |
Notes for #12 |
Preparation |
|
|
|
13 |
Nov 25, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Late-Autumn |
Pink Cascades |
Notes for #13 |
Small Dangers |
Openings |
Indulgences |
|
14 |
Dec 2, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Winter
|
Polly's Cracker |
Notes for #14 |
Misperception |
Human / Animal |
Short / Long |
|
15 |
Dec 9, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Winter |
Rising Snowball |
Notes for #15 |
Gliding Motion |
|
|
|
16 |
Dec 16, 2007 |
Yvonne Myers |
Early-Winter |
Shadow of a Crow |
Notes for #16 |
Snow |
Where? |
|
|
17 |
Dec 23, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Early-Winter |
Another Gin |
Notes for #17 |
Cards |
Not |
|
|
18 |
Dec 30, 2007 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Winter |
Below a Drift |
Notes for #18 |
Winter Weather |
Winter Animals |
|
|
19 |
Jan 6, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Winter |
The Old Furnace |
Notes for #19 |
Intermittency |
Sounds |
|
|
20 |
Jan 13 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Winter |
Dipping a Bit More |
Notes for #20 |
Weight
|
|
|
|
21 |
Jan 20, 2008 |
Toshiaki Koike
|
Mid-Winter |
Breifly Touching |
Notes for #21 |
Vestiges |
Man-made objects |
|
|
22 |
Jan 27, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Winter |
Smiling Repairman |
Notes for #22 |
Good News, Bad News |
Authority Figure |
|
|
23 |
Feb 3, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Winter |
Behind the Curtain |
Notes for #23 |
Out of Sight |
|
|
|
24 |
Feb 10, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Winter |
Gathered Around |
Notes for #24 |
Attractions |
|
|
|
25 |
Feb 17, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Winter |
Under the Covers |
Notes for #25 |
School |
|
|
|
26 |
Feb 24, 2008 |
Jon Davey
|
Late-Winter |
Breaking the Ice |
Notes for #26 |
Togetherness |
|
|
|
27
|
Mar 2, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Spring |
Instant Replay |
Notes for #27 |
Then & Now |
|
|
|
28 |
Mar 9, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Spring |
Low Tide |
Notes for #28 |
Receding |
|
|
|
29 |
Mar 16, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Spring |
Summer's Hose |
Notes for #29 |
Left There |
|
|
|
30 |
Mar 23, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Spring |
Vacant Seat |
Notes for #30 |
Unoccupied |
Seat-related |
|
|
31 |
Mar 30, 2008 |
Betty Kaplan |
Mid-Spring |
Snowdrops |
Notes for #31 |
White |
|
|
|
32 |
Apr 6, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Spring |
Breakfast in Bed |
Notes for #32 |
Welcomed Events |
|
|
|
33 |
Apr 13, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Spring |
Breaking Silence |
Notes for #33 |
Squeezed |
|
|
|
34 |
Apr 20, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Spring |
Between the Lips |
Notes for #34 |
Break apart/away |
|
|
|
35 |
Apr 27, 2008 |
John McDonald |
Mid-Spring |
The Rookie |
Notes for #35 |
New Learners |
|
|
|
36 |
May 4, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Spring |
A Frog's View |
Notes for #36 |
Frogs |
|
|
|
37 |
May 11, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Spring |
Third Degree |
Notes for #37 |
Gifts / Giving |
Ordinal Sequence |
Time-Related |
Gender |
38 |
May 18, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Spring |
Embers |
Notes for #38 |
Glowing |
|
|
|
39 |
May 25, 2008 |
Andrew Lockhart
|
Late-Spring |
Walking in the Shadows |
Notes for #39 |
Night Time |
|
|
|
40 |
Jun 1, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Summer |
Little Slug |
Notes for #40 |
Slow Movement |
|
|
|
41 |
Jun 8, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Summer |
Their Points |
Notes for #41 |
Biting Insects |
Flying / Not flying |
|
|
42 |
Jun 15, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early-Summer |
The Rainbow Ahead |
Notes for #42 |
Rain |
|
|
|
43 |
Jun 22, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Early Summer |
End Game |
Notes for #43 |
Endings |
|
|
|
44 |
Jun 29, 2008 |
Hortensia Anderson |
Mid-Summer
|
Out in the Rain |
Notes for #44 |
Splashing |
|
|
|
45 |
Jul 6, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Summer |
Pavement Blossoms |
Notes for #45 |
Botanical Beauty Contrasted |
|
|
|
46 |
Jul 13, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Summer |
Budgie in the Mirror |
Notes for #46 |
Kissing |
|
|
|
47 |
Jul 20, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Mid-Summer |
Out of Sight |
Notes for #47 |
Disappearing |
|
|
|
48 |
Jul 27, 2008 |
Zhanna P. Rader |
Late-Summer |
Quiet Moments |
Notes for #48 |
Romance |
Pattern: Him / Her |
|
|
49 |
Aug 3, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Summer |
Between |
Notes for #49 |
Squashed |
|
|
|
50 |
Aug 10, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Summer |
A Rosy Shade |
Notes for #50 |
Hot Weather |
|
|
|
51 |
Aug 17, 2008 |
[Solo] |
Late-Summer |
Bits of Sunset |
Notes for #51 |
Spots |
|
|
|
52 |
Aug 24, 2008 |
Gary Gay |
Late-Summer |
Finding the Sun |
Notes for #52 |
Among |
|
|
|
Haijin Karina Klesko (Rengay #4):
Karina lives in Louisiana and is formerly from upstate New York. She has been writing most of her life. In addition to writing children's books and Christian bible study plans, she writes rengay, tanka, renga, renku, and other poetry forms. She also works with young children developing haiku learning exercises. In 2004 Karina founded the The Outlaw Poets Yahoo poetry news group which was established for the sake of creativity in writing rather than for keeping to strict forms of western writing, leaning more towards eastern style forms:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheOutlawPoets/
Karina is also the owner of Poetrywriting.org and sponsors The Sketchbook, Karina Klesko editor, John Daleiden editor.
Masago joined The Outlaw Poets in the Fall of 2006 and after that wrote numerous renku and rengay together with Karina. In fact, it was with Karina that Masago first participated in writing a rengay. It is therefore appropriate that Karina was the first guest writer in this project.
Haijin Daniela Bullas (Rengay #8):
Daniela Draghia-Bullas was born in 1969 in Deva, Romania. She holds a degree in archaeology and museology and has lived with her husband in the U.K. since 2001. Daniela started writing poetry and prose in her teens. Her short stories won her the "Scanteia tineretului" Award in 1988. Her editorial debut was the "Umbra Libelulei" (Dragonfly's Shadow), a haiku anthology. Between 2003 and 2007 she has been a member of the editorial staff of two Romanian magazines. She has also published two books:
Several of her other works have also appeared in various on-line journals.
Masago met Daniela via the The Outlaw Poets Yahoo group and since the Spring of 2007 they have written numerous renku and rengay together. Daniela likes to write haiku in the 5-7-5 / 7-7 syllable format so each verse in the eighth rengay of the series is in this format.
Haijin Max Verhart (Rengay #12):
Max Verhart was born in 1944 in the Netherlands. He has written and published haiku since approximately 1980 and has held the following haiku association positions:
* President of the Haiku Circle Netherlands (1999-2003).
* European director of the World Haiku Association (2001-2002).
* Member of the editorial staff of the Red Moon Anthology (USA) since 2002.
* Co-editor of the Dutch/Flemish quarterly Vuursteen (Flint), the oldest haiku journal in Europe (2003-present).
* Associate editor for Modern Haiku, USA (2007-present).
Translations of Max's haiku have been published in journals, e-zines, and anthologies in at least twelve languages. Individual volumes include:
* Zijn met wat is (To be with what is), 1993.
* Een beetje adem, 1998 (English version: some breath, 1999).
* Geen woord teveel/not a word too much, 2000.
* Om kort te gaan (to be short) 2005.
* With Betty Kaplan: smoke signals - nine rengay, 2003.
* With Horst Ludwig: twelve moons/zwolf Monde/twelve moons - a bilingual rengay series (with English translation), 2004.
Max started his own small private publishing house called 't schrijverke' (whirlywig) in 2005.
Masago first encountered Max's work in issues of the Outlaw Poet's Sketchbook. In each issue he and Betty Kaplan wrote Rengay that Masago found captivating and original. Masago was delighted when Max agreed to participate in this Rengay series.
Haijin Yvonne Myers (Rengay #16):
Yvonne Myers is the moderator of the Off-the-wall "haiku" group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/offthewallhaiku/
Yvonne and Masago wrote a rengay together in June 2007. Since then numerous rengay have been written by members of Off-the-Wall.
Haijin Toshiaki Koike (Rengay #21):
Toshiaki Koike was born in Iwakura, a town near Nagoya, Japan. Toshiaki attended Shizuoka University where he studied Japanese Literature and was the leader of the University's haiku circle. It was there that he met his future wife Carol who had come to Japan from Canada as an exchange student. Through a later exchange of tanka and haiku poems a romance developed and they were eventually married. Ten years later they moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where Carol's mother was living. Their story is more fully described here:
http://www.ualberta.ca/~publicas/folio/34/20/06.html
Masago met Toshiaki at the 2006 Edmonton Summer Arts Festival where Toshiaki was displaying some of his artwork. They became fast friends and have been meeting regularly every two weeks since then to discuss English language, Japanese language & culture, and haiku poetry.
Haijin Jon Davey (Rengay #26):
Jon Davey who was born in Redruth, England. He gained a degree in English and European Thought & Literature from the Cambridge College of Art and Technology and later became a primary school teacher in Camborne, Cornwall. Jon is now living in a converted barn in the small village of Brea with partner Philippa and family. Jon began writing haiku in the early 1980's.
Masago and Jon were partners in a couple of Off-the-Wall Rengay exercises in July, 2007:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pcytHc47X3uDqqFJHbSF9aA
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pcytHc47X3uDWTQXn2hE0EA
[Off-the-Wall: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/offthewallhaiku/]
Haijin Betty Kaplan (Rengay #31):
Betty Kaplan is now retired from the Fashion Industry. She used to arrange clothes, now she arranges words. Betty started writing haiku in the early 1990's. Haiku changed her life. She has been published in Frogpond, Lynx, Woodpecker, South by Southeast, World Haiku Review, Sketchbook, American Tanka , Simply Haiku and CHO.
Masago first read Betty's work in Sketchbook where she has written many rengay with Max Verhart:
http://poetrywriting.org/
Masago was drawn to the freshness and creativity of these rengay and in June, 2007 had the pleasure of writing a rengay with Betty (it ended up supporting 4 themes):
http://tinyurl.com/yoyo85
Haijin John McDonald (Rengay #35):
John McDonald is a retired stone-mason living in Edinburgh Scotland. After some years of writing poetry in Scots (one of the languages native to scotland, the other being the celtic rooted Gaelic)) he became interested in haiku in the mid-1990's, and has been devoted to writing only that since. He has a web-page of scots haiku which he updates daily:
http://zenspeug.blogspot.com/
Around the time that the Masago haiku blog got started, John and Masago began leaving comments on each other's haiku blogs and have enjoyed each other's work since. Writing a rengay together for this series was an obvious extension of these poetic experiences.
J. Andrew Lockhart (Rengay #39):
J. Andrew Lockhart is the author of "Tangled in Wisteria" and has had work published in three countries in books and journals, such as Modern English Tanka, American Tanka, Haiku Harvest, Magnapoets, Fire Pearls, and Eucalypt. He lives in Van Buren, Arkansas, with his wife and their four children. Among other things, including teaching music, he spends time with photography as a hobby.
Andrew's Haiku blog, Past Tense:
http://jamesalockhart.blogspot.com/
Andrew's Photo blog, Present Tense:
http://vanburendailyphoto.blogspot.com/
Andrew and Masago regularly leave comments on each other's haiku blogs. It was therefore a pleasure when Andrew agreed to write this last Spring rengay in our "Rengay Through the Seasons" series.
Haijin Hortensia Anderson (Rengay #44):
Hortensia Anderson lives in the east village in nyc, usa. She took workshops at ABC NO RIO with Dorothy Friedman August and with many poets at the St. Mark's Poetry Project including Bernadette Mayer, Maureen Owen, and Allen Ginsberg.
She loves haibun, edits the haibun column for "moonset, the newspaper", and maintains a blog with monthly entries:
The Plenitude of Emptiness:
http://hortensiaanderson.blogspot.com/
She derives the most satisfaction from collaborations.
the timelessness
of cyberspace -
we birth a poem
Hortensia and Masago have collaborated on numerous poetic projects in past couple of years. Hortensia was one of the first who supported the idea of undertaking this "Rengay Through the Seasons project".
Haijin Zhanna P. Rader (Rengay #48):
Zhanna P. Rader is a Russian living in the USA with a degree in Library Science. She writes and translates a variety of poetry and short stories equally in Russian and in English, including poems for children, sonnets, limericks, haiku, and tanka. She has been published in both languages since the mid-1980's, also winning numerous poetry contests. She is the moderator of the WHCrussian Internet Russian haiku forum and a former President of the Athens, Georgia, Branch of National League of American Pen Women.
Masago met Zhanna via the Simply Haiku Yahoo forum in discussions about the Bird and Sea haiku series:
http://haikuworkshop.pbwiki.com/BirdHaiku
http://haikuworkshop.pbwiki.com/TheSeaAndItsHarbours
Since then Masago and Zhanna have written numerous rengay, renku, and renhai together. They also regularly consult with each other on their haiku writing projects.
Haijin Gary Gay (Rengay #52):
Garry Gay was born in Glendale, California in 1951. He received his B.P.A. degree in photography in 1974 and has been a professional photographer for the past 33 years. Gary started writing haiku in 1975 and was greatly influenced by Basho’s Narrow Road To The Deep North. He has steadily written haiku ever since.
He is one of the co-founders of the Haiku Poets of Northern California and became their first president in 1989 and again served as president between 2001-2008. As president in 1989 he founded the "Two Autumns" haiku reading series. In 1991 he was elected president of the "Haiku Society of America". In 1991 he co-founded "Haiku North America". In 1996 he also co-founded the "American Haiku Archives" in Sacramento, California. He is the creator of the poetic form called "Rengay" and is the author of several works including: "The Billboard Cowboy", "The Silent Garden", "Wings of Moonlight", "River Stones", "Along The Way." The work "The Unlocked Gate" was recently been published with John Thompson. Gary currently lives in the California wine country in a small town called Windsor with his wife Melinda and daughter Alissa.
Gary's photography web site:
http://www.photogarry.com/
Gary's online haiku book, "The long Way Home":
http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/ggayweb/
When Masago started writing Haiku in 2005 he had heard of Gary Gay as being the creator of the Rengay form. When planning this one-year project of "Rengay Through the Seasons" it was thought it would be appropriate to have a rengay written with Gary. When he replied to the affirmative it seemed appropriate and an honour that this last rengay in the project be written with him.