Haiku in Canada
You may think that a book entitled Haiku in Canada would be a very thick one. There’s a lot of territory to cover going back to the 1940s when haiku was written by Japanese people forced to live in internment camps in Canada during the second world war.
But haiku is short, remember? English-language haiku are usually fewer than 17 syllables, written on three horizontal lines. As Terry Ann Carter says in her new book, Haiku in Canada (Ekstasis Editions, 2020): “In Japanese, haiku consists of 17 morae or on, “sound beats written vertically.”
In her introduction to the book, Terry Ann says: “A haiku attempts to capture the ‘aha moment’ – the moment, not the syllables, is what matters most.” Haiku in Canada is full of those illuminating “aha moments.”
As Stephen Addiss said in his book, The Art of Haiku (Shambhala, 2012), “Haiku can find an inner truth from an outward phenomenon, and ultimately use words to go beyond words.”
“Another definition of haiku is ‘one-breath poetry,’ “ Terry Ann says.
Terry Ann has done a masterful job with her book as she combines “one breath poetry” with the organizational skills and the attention to detail needed to gather names and dates; book titles for the reference section; lists of conferences and haiku websites. And she weaves her own reminiscences of her life in haiku into this tribute to Haiku in Canada.
I remember writing haiku more than fifteen years ago when Sarah and I still lived in Guelph, Ontario. The Arboretum at the University of Guelph featured several gardens including the Japanese Garden. It’s various elements such as the pathway to the teahouse, the salutation gateway, stepping stones, a reflecting pool, the kenninji-gaki bamboo fence and the […]