Bee Jay is breathing and Susan Burch finds a love note

 

i am the joey

breathing in my dead mother’s

pouch

Bee Jay

 

Bee Jay says:

“Sometimes a haiku can take years of thought and revisions. Sometimes one pops out seemingly fully formed. This haiku came out of me suddenly after I spent a few weeks reading experimental haiku and Japanese gendai on social media and in journals such as Heliosparrow, is/let, and Otoroshi.

I placed my fresh haiku into a workshop group to gauge responses and to see how I could improve it, but despite the sentence structure and the personification/anthropomorphism, the reaction to it was very positive, including a surprising request from Alan Summers to submit it to his new journal.”

one favourite haiku and why

I compiled a list of 30 of my fave contemporary haiku and then selected Susan Burch's haiku out of that. 

washed jeans―

his love note

still dirty

Susan Burch

Honourable Mention 4th Annual Senryu Contest, 

Sonic Boom July 2018

Bee Jay says:

“In 2014, Susan Burch was one of the first poets to write constructive comments and expert advice on my haiku and she later gave me the confidence to begin submitting my work. Her haiku and senryu often move me and this one is one of my faves. 

In this poem I see a fresh, new romance where lust and passion colours everything and even the most simple sentence contains sexual innuendo. I can imagine the kinds of words written in that note. The jeans could be hers or his but I prefer to think they’re hers. The love note is ‘still’ dirty which makes me believe she’s read it before. 

On the other hand, there is also the possibility that this is a dark poem about an illicit love affair and that she finds this dirty note in his jeans. This kind of ambiguity is one I admire in a haiku, I luv the idea that a haiku can be seen as positive in one reading and then so negative in another.”

favourite quote from Waiting for Godot

“There's no lack of void.”

Withnail and I

“Give me a Valium, I'm getting the fear.”

Alan note:

Also enjoy my own commentary, as the contest judge, on Susan Burch’s haikai verse:

“Being Human - the ordinary intensity” 

a look at senryu

https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/06/being-human-ordinary-intensity-look-at.html 

Check out Femku guest editor issue with Susan Burch: 

Femku PDF web link: https://69b046c2-a7e1-4a9a-9a22-1c70986eaa24.filesusr.com/ugd/f4c0ea_05ace7dcead141fb9236f9d4460f7f5a.pdf 

Mentioned journals:

is/let: https://isletpoetry.wordpress.com 

  

Otoroshi: https://otoroshijournal.wixsite.com/home 

  

Heliosparrow: https://heliosparrow.com 

  

Sonic Boom: https://sonicboomjournal.wixsite.com/sonicboom