spring thaw
A year ago, I started posting one short poem a day to Inleo’s threads. Shortly after, I started posting those same poems to Instagram (357 days ago to be exact). About eight months later, I was contacted by a UK based ambient music label to see if they could use one of my poems for their weekly haiku challenge.
In these challenges, the record label shares a haiku and musicians that follow the label create ambient music tracks based on their impressions of the poems. These compositions are then collected and shared on Soundcloud and also in a weekly radio show.
While submitting autobiographical information about myself with this record label, talk turned to Japan, and the owner of the label asked me if I would be interested in participating in one or more of the haiku/music events that he was planning for January and February of 2024.
After three months of planning and preparations, the event I will join in Tokyo is now only one week away. I am very excited to see how it goes and what it could lead to.
I’m also left with a question.
Why don’t things like this happen on HIVE?
Or do they and I’m just not aware of them?
on this country road
full of vacancies
my heart releases
months of tension
hay season begins
no coat no tissues
is this like Monday for you
new moon
leaves fall
I fill my cup
its waves turn over
things it has swallowed
with their giant canopies
young ones don’t grow
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Hi! I'm so glad you're able to participate in both the weekly haiku challenge and the event. I don't like Instagram, but the reality is that to stay connected to the local art and cultural scene, I have no choice but to have an account and look at it with some regularity. Even if I don't like it, I don't think there is any hiver in my area (except for my wife). On the other hand, I don't think that through Instagram I would have ever read the haikus in English of someone who is living in Japan, nor that you would have read a poem by someone who lives in a small rural town in Argentina. I thank Hive for that.
I think, anyway, that the idea of collaborating with communities of musicians or illustrators could work well here. For example, we could choose one poem a week from those who participate in Blockchain Poets and have another community run an illustration or musicalization initiative. It would be very enriching (don't you think, @dbooster?).
By the way, I really liked this week's haiku. Loved the image of the thaw and the tension.
Greetings!
It’s true. Hive is unique because, while it has a small user base, the people here are from all over the world, so you are more likely to find someone doing something or look at a post that is out of the range of what you would normally be interested in.
With Instagram and other sites, it’s so massive that it becomes easy to not pay attention to anyone or anything that you don’t already know.
My criticism in this post (that I wish there were people like Marco from Naviar on Hive) is funny, because it’s a perfect opportunity to become that person, yet I don’t (or haven’t yet).
I like your idea. What do you think @dbooster? Should we try to replicate something like this on Hive?
An opportunity to become that person... I often have the same thing happen to me, but at the end of the day we are what we are, and your haikus are valuable in themselves. At least I look forward to them every week. Greetings!
I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.
That's very exciting! Your poems are always so rich, my mind goes aswirl in time and space. This one did that to me today:
Who but you could have made the absence of a runny nose interesting?
So which poem did they choose?
I think you answer the question of "why not on hive?" right here. It's a lot of work, for very little return! I ran a small wewrite contest a few times, nothing on the level you would like to see here, and it sucked up my life.
I'm excited for you, and hope we hear all about it.
Are those your art pieces?
Great post!!!
Sorry for the late response.
The poem they chose was this:
in pre-dawn darkness
the avant-garde soundtrack
of orchestral rainfall
Yeah, those are all stencils I drew and cut out for the workshop, and also examples of painted pieces I made to show everyone what they would be making.
Only three people happened into the event, but they were happy enough to join that it made everything worthwhile. Plus, I got the musicians involved and we all had fun.
The funny thing about doing an event that combines haiku and ambient music is that the amount of people who are interested in either haiku or ambient music is small, and the number of people interested in both is even smaller.
The musicians at the event, even though it was inspired by haiku, weren’t even interested in haiku. 🤣