Is there anything worse than a poet who explains their own poems, or an artist who explains their own art . . .?
Maybe not, but it can be hard to avoid when it comes to haiku.
Haiku are almost always season specific, and place specific. Plants, animals, and weather patterns vary significantly from country to country, and region to region. If you want readers in other countries to have a chance of appreciating the nuance of your haiku, you often need to explain something the local references you make.
Here for instance is one of my haiku:
i’ll just wait here
until the rain stops —
lemon-scented gum
This haiku was featured on the Echidna Tracks website on Christmas Day 2020, I’ve used it in the Cactus Haiku section of this website, and it was included in the Under the Same Moon: 4th Australian Haiku Anthology.
Many people outside Australia will be familiar with the distinctive smell of eucalypts, either from cleaning products, or from cough lollies, however few, if any, will be familiar with the lemon-scented gum.
The lemon-scented gum, is widely planted as a street tree in Melbourne, Australia (Naarm), and looks like a number of other gum trees, such as the ghost gum, with its smooth white bark. It is, however, unique in that when it’s leaves are crushed, or when it is rained on, the lemon scented gum releases . . . as you may have guessed . . . a distinctive, lemonish aroma.
How could anyone know this association between lemon-scented gums, and the rain, unless they had had it explained, or experienced it for themselves?
Read my other posts on haiku and Australia here.
Clem Byard 