It’s catching!

Maia, of “Winter Gulls and Water Mint”  in response to my ‘Haiku conversation‘ sent me a wonderfully clear and helpful Haiku tutorial – see it in the comments section of that post. And Maia also wrote “you also might find renga interesting to have a look at.”

And so of course I looked it up:

Well! there is so much STUFF written about it, a bit bewildering actually – but the easiest for me to follow was on the Young Writers website – well I guess that fits, I am only just beginning.     They say:                                                                                                 Renga, means ‘linked poem’. Poets worked in pairs or small groups, taking turns composing the alternating three-line and two-line stanzas.

What is the structure of a Renga Poem?                                                                        To create a Renga, one poet writes the first stanza, which is three lines long with a total of seventeen syllables – the same structure as a haiku. The next poet adds the second stanza, a couplet with seven syllables per line. The third stanza repeats the structure of the first (another haiku) and the fourth repeats the second, alternating in this pattern until the poem is completed.

Example of a Renga Poem

The final leaf falls (5)
The tree branches are so bare (7)
Autumn has arrived (5)

Remember Summer’s warm kiss (7)
So gentle, it will be missed. (7)

And then this wonderful comment popped into my inbox this morning from Aranislandgirl: “…I have just awoke at half past one a.m. and a Haiku runs through my head? Something about your post unwittingly stuck and I could not get back to sleep until I rechecked the syllable criteria! …. And excitedly creative, I think you understand.

While in the garden
His feet became quite sodden
From the sideways rain

(I ABSOLUTELY understand – and here goes with my Renga response)

It is sunny here today                                                                                                        No wet feet, i’m glad to say

 

Anyone else want to join in?!