THREE SCENES FROM THE MARITAL LIFE OF A POET

- - - dedicated to Hoshinaga Fumio
-
The name of my wife
is Fib - more kind she is
more painful
-
Liberal relationship
mixed with conservative one -
dedication expired
-
My wife owns
two houses - I own
three freedoms
-
- - - Dimitar Anakiev

KSENOFOBIČNI KOMARCI, 21 haiku iz azilnog doma

Iz osmojezične knjige „Xenophobic Mosquitoes“ Dimitra Anakieva (engleski, kineski, slovenački, nemački, farsi, ruski, italijanski i portugalski), 2017, Kamesan Books. Specijalno za XXZ Magazin na srpski preveo autor

1.
U talasima mora
porodicu izgubih, da bih
ponovo varilac postao

2.
Na nozi ožiljak,
u srcu rana
ja sam iz Maroka

3.
Grči se telo
oznojeno: bez heroina
mladi Afganistanac


4.
Pomozi, doktore!
U Kamerunu prebijaju
homoseksualce

5.
Umesto snova
svaku noć misli mi posećuje
moja porodica

6.
Promenih religiju
a onda još i otadžbinu,
moj Iran

7.
Slomljen, kao
slomljeni nos njegove žene
odbijeni azilant

8.
Putujući tri meseca,
po kopnu, vodi i vazduhu,
stigosmo u tvoju zemlju

9.
Ksenofobični komarci
izujedali azilante: crne i bele,
muškarce i žene

10.
Pobegli od rata,
pobegli od siromaštva
u azilni dom


11.
Azilanti
sa bolešću srca
za koju nema leka

12.
Noge prebili
Talibani, dušu ubila
birokratija

13.
Pakistanski plemenski ratovi
koštali ga: dve noge
i dve ruke

14.
Izgubih 16 kila
za dva meseca, sad jedem
antidepresive

15.
Sa 13 godina
rodila a sad trudna
sa anemijom

16.
Zove se „džungla“
a tamo živimo samo ja,
moja braća i sestre

17.
Tražim lek:
mene i porodicu ubija
dosada

18.
Arapi protiv
Afganistanaca: tuča
u azilnom domu

19.
Ponovo osmeh
na njenom licu: razgovor
o čorbi iz Herata

20.
Tetovaža iz Kabula
govori sedam jezika
da bi preživela

21.
„Isto kao za građane“
a njima treba više podrške,
više prava, da prežive

FIVE PASHTUN'S HAIKU ON STRUGGLE / PET PAŠTUNSKIH HAIKUA O BORBI

Dimitar Anakiev
PET PAŠTUNSKIH HAIKUA O BORBI
FIVE PASHTUN'S HAIKU ON FIGHT

- - - za/for Aleksandru Todorović Novak

1.
Jedini narod
još ne pokoren silom
to su Paštuni.

The only people
not yet subdued by force
these are Pashtuns.

2.
Paštunski dečak
počne da bije majku:
lekcija borbe.

Pashtun's boy
begins to beat mother:
lesson of struggle.

3.
Borbu Paštuna
iznose žene ropstvom
na kolenima.

Fight of Pashtuns
carries out enslaved women
on their knees.

4.
Liberalizam
oslobađanjem žene
ukida borbu.

Liberalism
by liberating a woman
abolishes the fight.

5.
Usmena pesma
o mukama paštunki
zove se: landaj

Oral poem on
suffering of Pashtun women
It's called: landay

ANDREA CECON ON POETRY OF MANU KANT

Manu Kant was born in Patiala, in Indian Punjab, but grew up in Chandigarh, India. He also used to live in the former Soviet Union where he achieved his specialization in television journalism at the Lomonosov University of Moscow in the early nineties. He is a freelance journalist and his articles have appeared on several Indian newspapers. Manu Kant, as far as I know, is the only communist poet in the world, declaring himself as such, who is writing haiku. His political faith is an aspect difficult to disregard when one is dealing with his poetry.

When I was asked to write an introduction for a new book of such a particular author, I felt a bit confused, thinking about it for several days. Then I began an internet search of news related to Manu Kant and his poetry, read his manuscript several times, and discovering soon that he is an unparalleled author in the current poetic scene, a haijin with a great ability to master different compositional styles of haiku poetics. His being socially engaged is an integral part of his poetic production.


Wednesday, 20 October 2010 at 13:29

road workers at work
before the night is out
a road stretches in front of the world


In this case, his attention for the less considered and respected in society goes to the road workers, a category absolutely not considered in India those who struggle hard exclusively for survival. Yet already here it is possible to see the poetic power of which this author is capable. The road stretching before the world can easily be interpreted as a sign of hope and redemption for these workers. It is interesting to note the trait-of-union between the first and the third verses, in that "before the night is out" that shows us how hard they worked all night long to make the road: this is definitely one of my favourite poems in this collection.
It is also interesting to note how the descriptive capacity of Manu Kant focuses on moments of absolute intimacy and confidentiality of the subjects examined. An aspect to which we will return again in this analysis.
In the following two poems, the public catering workers are protagonists:


Tuesday, 1 October 2013 at 13:38

the backside of the market
where the crows congregate
& the restaurant workers gossip

Saturday, 5 October 2013 at 13:54

as if just out from a prison
a line of coffee house waiters
ogling at a girl in short skirt & high heels


This is another category of the underclass in the vast Indian megalopolises. Both poems are worth of attention. In the first poem, the backside of a market seems to be congenial for the restaurant workers' chatter as for a crows' gathering. The combination of these two images is interesting. In the second composition, however, the observations become more detailed and go to a deeper level. Waiters in a cafeteria observe the movements of a girl in a short skirt and high heels without concealing their repressed desire, as if they were just released convicts after a long detention. Manu Kant gives us again what his eye registers through the streets, the daily life of the Indian subcontinent, doing it with an amazing lyricism, as in the following haiku:

Tuesday, 24 January 2012 at 20:32

cold, dark night
a Sikh gentleman’s clothes & shoes
all in matching colours

His being politically engaged transforms him into a meticulous observer of the humanity that surrounds him. The children seem to occupy a privileged position in his poetry and in his observations. Street children, exploited workers surprised in moments of astounding intimacy:


Wednesday, 26 March 2014 at 18:32

a rag picker kid
I wonder just one thing:
is his mom there at night
to massage his tired legs and feet?

Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 20:14

winter night
a small rag picker’s long stare at the toys
through the window of a shop

In the first poem, the author wonders humanly if the little protagonist of his verses after an allegedly difficult day, will find comfort this night in his mother's arms. In the second poem we have another small rag-picker which remains immobile looking at the toys in a shop window: a dream of a different life that he cannot even imagine. Similar reflections arise from the following haiku:


Tuesday, 8 April 2014 at 11:32

instead of a brush & paints
in the hands of a small shoeshine boy
shoe brush & shoe polish

Why is there just a brush and shoe polish instead of a brush and paints in the hands of the little shoeshine?

In this brief analysis I wanted to underline only some features and several of my observations, avoiding to focus on purely technical aspects. There would be many other elements in Manu Kant's poetry that deserve to be investigated.

Looking at the international scene, it seems that many poets born in the middle class of our post-modern society are not pointing out the difficult situation of the masses on a global level. The true poetry born in places and realities distant from our western world is considered little more than an exotic curiosity. If people do not react on poetry, it means that the poetry itself offers little hope. Considering this point of view, Manu Kant's poetry can certainly be considered as a new and strong voice for the future.


Andrea Cecon
former vice president IHA and Haijin

LIBERALISM OF WHITE SNOW

---to Richard
-
Liberalism
of white snow--in March
enslaved flowers.
-
--- Dimitar Anakiev


--- za Ričarda

Liberalizam
belog snega - u martu
porobi cveće

--- Dimitar Anakiev

FROM THE LETTER TO MY AMERICAN FRIEND

" Still, haiku as a genre remains nearly invisible to the literary world!" you wrote. Yes, it is like that, despite the popularity of haiku. A paradox?

I think, the reason for such situation is exactly because we treat haiku as a genre. This practice came from the Higginson-US-military-Cold-War-school.
Haiku as seen in Japan is a form with many, many, many genres. So haiku is not genre but form. Form means pluralism of genres.
When we treat haiku as a "genre" we kill pluralism. That is the problem No.1. in today haiku.
"Genre" means "defined content". So poet has no free hands, he/she are subordinated to the limits of genre. That basically means that
haiku is mono-cultural poetry. Because the real meaning of multiculturalism is not "different countries" or "different races" but different ideologies.
(cultures are different because they were formed by different ideologies)
When we treat haiku as a genre we in fact do censorship. Haiku as an institution of ideological censorship cannot be an institution of poetry, that means
poets cannot really express themselves through the censored "genre". Poets who have something to say are chased away from haiku. The last one whom I met
was James Kirkup. I cannot consider XY as a poet even his formal skills and sense/talent are excellent. But he has nothing to say to this world - that is what poets usually do
and what poet makes a poet. And he is one of the most talented I met...
When I have to say something through the haiku I am automatically censored. Day by day, attempt by attempt. Why nobody speaks about? That is the problem. The editors do not want to publish
poems because "it is not haiku." The problem that faces work of Tohta Kaneko, Ban'ya Natsuishi... not only myself.

Dimitar Anakiev

BRANKO MANOJLOVIĆ, few poems

Born in Belgrade, 1969. Lived and studied in London, UK 1990-2002. Since 2002 living and working in Kyoto, Japan. Poems and short stories published in a number of magazines, including Verse, Ink,
Sweat & Tears, Magma. Haiku and haibun published in various haiku anthologies, incl. Meltdown, Persimmon, Genjuan Haibun Contest, Decorated Works etc. NHK ‘Haiku Master’ 2017. Rakugo
performer as a member of English Rakugo comedy troupe. Blog: http://kyotocacti.blogspot.jp/


Lanterns swaying
up the forest path –
you sweep a ghost
off my shoulder

Ове светиљке
осветлише путању
све до шумарка;
а ти, ко да отресе
духа са мог рамена

*
Veil of the night:
our blue VW the last
on the parking lot

Копрена ноћи-
наш плави VW задњи
на паркиралишту

*
A gooey cup
of macha latte:
the emerald lake

Густо помешан
зелени чај с млеком:
смарагдно језеро

*
Fukuchiyama castle:
wooden arrow loops
shut on Tuesday

Хаката замак:
омча дрвених стрела
не ради уторком

*
A four-century- old shrine:
English version fortune slip
counsels me on love

Тај пагански храм:
гатање на енглеском,
савет љубавни

*
A lifeless rat
in heron’s bill – the crow
watching haplessly

Мртав је пацов
у чапљином кљуну већ-
немоћна врана.

*
Down the wooden slide
he is a boy once again

Низ тобоган
дрвени спусти се
све до дечаштва.

Песме превео: Димитар Анакиев

RIDERS OF PREJUDICES

Riders of prejudices
get off -- at the same time
haiku too small and too big.
--- Dimitar Anakiev

Sjaši jahaču
predrasuda-haiku
te nadilazi
---Dimitar Anakiev

SUTOR, NE ULTRA CREPIDAM (SHOEMAKER, NOT BEYOND THE SHOE)

Dimitar Anakiev
SUTOR, NE ULTRA CREPIDAM
(SHOEMAKER, NOT BEYOND THE SHOE!)

I have recently come across an online article, a commentary on my haiku. The article in question was penned by Robert Wilson, entitled ‘A Butterfly Wearing Tennis Shoes: What Is and Isn’t a Haiku’, which in its abridged form contains 8795 words. The text was also shared by an obscure Serbian haiku portal ‘Haiku Reality’. I must confess I do not read American haiku literature. That is why my response is five years late. I ‘met’ Mr. Wilson, then an editor of a popular haiku fanzine ‘Simply Haiku’, via his aggressive intrusions into my online Haiku MasterClass (HMC). Wilson was consistently trying to point out to the HMC members that I don’t know what constitutes haiku, in lieu offering his own expertise on the subject. Let us then look into this expertise of his. Firstly, my haiku followed by Wilson’s evaluation.

A Neanderthal man
bombing Afghanistan back
to the Stone Age

D. Anakiev, 2001

Balkan poet, Dimitar Anakiev, calls the above poem a haiku. It is an incomplete sentence, an anti-war diatribe utilizing a three-line format that resembles a haiku visually. Apart from its visual similarity, Anakiev's poem is the antithesis of hokku composed by Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Issa Kobayashi. It is subjective, leaves little to interpret, makes no reference of nature, and has no connection with zoka, which Basho called essential to the genre. Instead of utilizing aesthetic styles (tools) to invoke a surplus of meaning that every reader can interpret differently, Anakiev makes a blunt, biased political statement, ranting: A "Neanderthal man bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." The poem is a senryu, not a haiku, a distinction few in international haiku circles understand.

Let us take one point at a time.

1/ According to Wilson the poem is an incomplete sentence. What is the point of this qualification? Would it better for poetry if this was a ‘complete sentence’? This is mere prattling, an attack for the sake of an attack.

2/ My poem, according to Wilson, is an anti-war diatribe. Now, even if it was just a diatribe against war (and not poetry) it would still justify its existence in a humanitarian sense (hence in a poetical sense) and still possessing a higher value than epigone ‘poems’ by Robert Wilson. Incidentally, if I were to write a mere one-directional diatribe, it would probably go something like this:

George Bush, oh
you bastard – get the hell
out of Afghanistan!

However, instead of a direct statement I painted quite a complex picture which apparently proved too complex for Wilson’s one-track mind, which, unable to comprehend the poem’s implicit connotations, resorted to attacking it.

3/ Wilson claims my poem has nothing in common with a ‘hokku’ form. How to understand this inconsistency: at first he talks about haiku then suddenly jumps to hokku? Is the grand editor of simple mind able to distinguish between haiku and hokku?!

4/ My poem is ‘subjective’ (sic!), continues Wilson his dilettante foray into haiku poetry: and what poem is not subjective? In the same text in a preceding paragraph Wilson claims ‘Basho’s haiku are psychological sketches, however Basho is not a subjective poet’. So, Basho’s psychological sketches are objective?! Not only Wilson’s general learning is problematic – lack of understanding of basic terminology as its logic application – he even turns his claptrap into poetic dogma. It is altogether a different question as to who exactly is to follow this dogma. There is an old saying in these parts: ‘Every doctor has his own patient’.

5/ My poem ‘leaves little to interpret’: here Wilson reiterates, in a slightly different way, his earlier claim about ‘diatribe’. He is unable to explicate the poem’s layered structure thus missing on its metaphorical implications. The latter are accessible to poets and people with poetic sense, yet Wilson has no poetic talent and has nothing to say even though he wishes so. That is why he is forced to spit on other poets so that he can raise himself above poets.

6/ My work ‘makes no reference to nature’ (sic!): it is curious that such an ‘expert’ on Japanese poetry is unable to identify elements of nature in my poem. Not only does he lack poetic talent in discerning metaphorical nuances, he also shows ignorance of haiku writing technique. And yet Wilson is haiku editor and has his followers in the Balkans! Let me explain: nature in haiku is presented through the seasonal cycles, and is expressed by ‘kigo’ – a seasonal term. There are multiple types of kigo, classified and listed in Saijiki, a kigo lexicon. Saijiki classifies ‘kigo’ into various sections, such as: sky, earth, plants, animal etc. One of these sections is ‘human life’. In this section there is for example a term ‘beer’, which is a summer kigo, or warm sake, a winter kigo. As the American invasion of Afghanistan commenced on October 7th, this clearly indicates a season – autumn. My poem therefore includes a kigo and the seasonal cycle, something that Wilson fails to notice.

7/ My work, says Wilson, has ‘no connection with zoka… essential to the genre’. The mystical term ‘zoka’ is used here in order to confuse those who are unfamiliar with its Japanese meaning. This term in fact signifies the transience of life, i.e. ‘nothing lasts forever’, or in its Ancient Greek equivalent ‘panta rhei’ – ‘all flows’. It is hard to understand the narrow-mindedness of someone who is unable to notice the instability and impermanence of this world in the act of bombing, a total destruction. However, we have seen Wilson being unable to recognize neither the metaphor nor the ‘kigo’ in this poem, and it comes as no surprise he is also unable to recognize ‘zoka’. What is even more worrying is that Wilson treats haiku as genre (an American fad). Is the sonnet genre or a poetic form? Is the quatrain genre or a poetic form? Is the novel genre or a literary form? Short story? Through his ‘genre’ claim Wilson has shown himself to be a literary analphabet, a man with a limited outlook, one who takes poetry as a hostage of his own ego.

8/ Finally, the assertion by expert Robert Wilson, that my poem is a ‘senryu’, not a haiku. After all the bogus criticism it would be unrealistic to expect for this claim to be true. I will nevertheless set out the major differences between a senryu and a haiku. Senryu is based on intellect, it is a sort of humorous remark, a witticism, whereas haiku is an emotional poem incorporating a metaphysical dimension. How facile can you be to take a bomb-dropping scene as a ‘humorous remark’?

Robert Wilson’s criticism is typical of one mediocre state of affairs in American haiku formed during the Cold War era, and which almost completely shattered the enthusiasm and legacy of the Beat Generation poets. The destruction of form as well as limiting haiku to a narrow cultural niche, are the main characteristics of the contemporary American haiku – none of these poets are significant on a national level. R. Wilson’s assessment of my poem reminded me of Jernej Kopitar’s disapproval of France Prešern, a 19th century Slovene poet. Prešern’s advice to Kopitar was to stick to his shoes (‘Kopitar’ in Slovenian means shoemaker) alluding to an ancient Latin proverb. No better advice for many of today’s ‘haiku experts’.

Translated by Branko Manojlović

И КРАЉ ПЕРА ЈЕ ЗА ТИТА (ХАИБУН)

И краљ Пера је за Тита
(прерада четничке песме у хаику)

Кад је краљ Петар II Крађорђевић из Лондона (под притиском Черчила) поручио четницима да се ставе под Титову команду, они су почели опасно да пију а смислили су и песму. Тамо код Прокупља пијани четници су певали: ”Ми за краља, краљ за Тита, шта ће бити, бог те пита”.


Ми за краља, краљ
за Тита - шта ће бити
Бог те пита - снег.

Димитар Анакиев

PERSIMMON, A NEW HAIKU COLLECTION BY HAILSTONE

Dimitar Anakiev: PERSIMMON, A NEW HAIKU COLLECTION BY HAILSTONE

Each haiku anthology published by the Hailstone Haiku Circle based in Kyoto – I had previously read two of them – offers the reader a complex poetic experience, as well as giving rise to a torrent of thoughts. First and foremost, these anthologies, although written in English, by and large transcend the local and often contradictory concept of ‘English Language Haiku’ (ELH). Further, these are rare collections of modern haiku where the poetic gets beyond the cultural, while the culture is never neglected. On the contrary, culture is given a lot of attention. I would therefore wholeheartedly recommend the latest collection ‘Persimmon’, as an important, original and rather unusual poetic phenomenon, one that exemplifies the concept of ‘international haiku’, pioneered and developed in the last two decades by several poets and intellectuals, one of whom is the author of these lines.
Let me first of all pose a question: why is a collective work at all necessary in haiku? One part of the answer lies in the knowledge that haiku, as its name suggests, is not an independent poem – the shortest poetic form with the status of a poem is hakka (5/7/7), which is two syllables longer than a haiku, albeit not as established as waka or tanka (5/7/5/7/7), which usually contain two phrases, totalling 14 syllables more than a haiku. Haiku is therefore more of a poetic phrase than a proper, fully-fledged poem. Haiku’s open-endedness, its openness to different interpretation, is its most important characteristic. This trait, together with a simple form of metaphor (juxtaposition), is the basis for collaboratory work as a sort of ‘jam variations’ on a theme, whereby everyone plays around in the space opened up by a haiku. In this way a theme is explored collectively, yet a haiku poem still remains open, and a theme is never concluded, wrapped up. This is where the discreet charm of haiku lies.
The simplicity of the juxtaposition relates to the elliptical accessibility of the haiku form. Traditional haiku, relying on juxtaposition, therefore differs from the concept of modern haiku (Gendai) which often develops the metaphor into an allegory. Due to the allegorical nature of their haiku, Gendai poets seldom write haibun: the allegory itself is a sort of metaphor expanded into a story. This means that in Gendai Haiku the story is already condensed in the haiku itself. This is why poets writing traditional haiku engage in writing haibun which serve as a narrative complement to a haiku, whereas Gendai poets are inclined to essay writing. The open-endedness of the haiku thus offers the opportunity to add something: pictures (haiga), linked verses (renku), prose (haibun), and collaboration as a kind of thematic, stylistic exercise. All this poetic wealth is present in the international haiku circle Hailstone, making their collections real poetic treasure troves which have no equivalent in the haiku of today.

Persimmon contains more than 168 individual haiku all of which are interconnected in one way or another: groups made up of 14 to 16 poets are brought together under the heading ‘haiku village’, thus forming ‘nests’ made up of 26-38 haiku; smaller groups of poets (6), a sequence of poems on Carmina Burana (41 verses), and ‘Calendar Says’, an alphabetical collection of poems based solely on ‘key words’, or more accurately, key verbs. This reminded me of a discussion I had some twenty years ago with a Japanese poet, Ban’ya Natsuuishi, a creator of the ‘key word’ concept. He visited me here in Slovenia on three separate occasions, so we had ample time for discussion. I had come to realize, through my own practice, that nouns are not necessarily key words in a poem and I wanted to clarify this with the author of the concept himself. Ban’ya claimed that various words in a poem qualify as ‘key’, including adjectives, adverbs and verbs, and that the choice depends on poetic emphasis. This vital insight we employed while writing ‘Mitsu no Sekai Renku’, the first multicultural, democratic renku by D. Anakiev, Kim Goldberg (US) and an Indian poet, Manu Kant. This renku introduced new rules and thoroughly affirmed the ‘key word’ concept as a basis for linked verse, while at the same time disposing of seasonal associations as the basis for renga/renku poetics. We believe that we thus opened a door to multiculturalism in haiku and renku.

The Hailstone Haiku Circle poetry collections confirm the importance of ‘key words’ in international, multicultural haiku. In the previous collection, Meltdown, key words were paramount whereas in Persimmon they featureonly at the end of the book. In the last two decades two averse concepts in haiku have emerged: on the one hand there is English Language Haiku (ELH) as a monocultural, limited and occasionally chauvinist concept, and on the other, there is the multicultural concept of ‘International Haiku’ into which, and with great pleasure, we can include this very special and specific work by the Hailstone Haiku Circle. What might seem only an insignificant detail, but to me is of the essence: doctrinally the members of the ELH alliance tend to begin their haiku with a small letter, as if these are not poems but snippets of reality, whereas the members of the Hailstone Circle are aware they are writing Poetry, thus starting their poems with a capital letter.

Translated by: Branko Manojlović