Blithe Spirit is that most estimable of things, the unpretentious poetry magazine that has quietly served its small readership year after year with poems, articles and discussions. Blithe Spirit is the Journal of the British Haiku Society, but with haiku are included senryu, tanka, haibun and renku. The Journal first appeared in 1991 and is now 64 page publication with a circulation around 300.
I am not sure haiku, or any of the condensed eastern forms, really works in English, or – to put matters another way – convinced that the syllable restriction is a sufficient basis for poetry of any substance. Other verse techniques – rhythm, sound pattering, rhyme – would seem equally important, but its devotees obviously see matters differently. The poems are too short to select lines from, and to showcase the work I have had to infringe copyright restrictions, for which apologies. (If aggrieved parties email me I will of course remove any offending work.) All pieces are taken from the June 2006 edition of Blithe Spirit, placed online by the South Bank (London) Poetry Library, and all are titled ‘Spring’.
The first is by John Mcdonald and is entitled ‘Easter’:
a monk on his knees
scrubs out the confessional
John Kinory’s piece also has a good tactile sense to it:
first day of spring
short sleeves
shivering
Charles Christian’s ‘Spring’ has neatly linked the thrust of daffodil trumpets to resetting the clocks.
a late spring
the daffodils do not open
till the clocks go forward
And that daffodil is past its best when (as so often happens in England) the spring has yet to properly arrive. Bill Wyatt has:
Is it really spring?
now, how can I convince
that sad daffodil
Leo Lavery manages a pun on ‘blue’ with:
the cuckoo
savouring
its one blue note
With Kohjin Sakamoto we come back to where the haiku originated:
knees up
above cherry blossoms,
boy on a swing
First posted by Colin Holcombe 20 12 14 on TextEtc.com blog.
