Today, I have been training myself to become concise! My assignment report, to be handed in next week, has been such great fun, but trying to get it into 3000 words is killing me! I need to focus on exactly what is most important to enable the whole flavour of the research.
So, to get myself tuned into this pruning, I have spent most of today thinking in Haiku.
Haiku are short poems that use sensory language to capture a feeling or image. They are often inspired by an element of nature, a moment of beauty or a poignant experience. Haiku poetry was originally developed by Japanese poets, and the form was adapted to English and other languages by poets in other countries.
Traditional Haiku have a structure of 17 syllables and elude to the whole rather than give everything to the reader.
These excercises have really helped me. What I have found is that I have all the most important words left in the sentence, which enables me to move them round. A bit like having your favourite pieces of furniture in a small room, and moving them around until they feel right for you. I like the words to have multi purpose, so that the last word in a sentence 1 might make sense as the first word in the next.
Here's one of my Haiku from today, as an example
Rainfall heavy, now
clouds calling, sorrow sodden
Dry eyed, yet skin wet
Open Umbrella
Shielded fast, against the pain
Come under with me
This has given me an idea for my Reflective
Practice Assignment, also to be assessed this month.
I have written the story Mother Moon, as I have
said in earlier posts. I have climbed right into the
character to feel her, not to emulate her, but to take
her into the storytelling with me. I have used
techniques to expand the stoytelling, which I will
describe in more detail in a later blog post. Now,
that I can breathe the character into the story,
I think it would be a really exciting excercise to
concentrate the emotion and poignance of the
storyline into a series of Haiku. This would bring
me into sharpest focus with the beauty and intensity
of the piece, where every word and nuance counts.
And I would like to write this collection of Mother
Moon Haiku looking out to the sea where the story
was written; my beloved New Quay, on the West
Wales Coastline. Not entirely sure I will have time
to do that pre-assessment as the performance is
24th and 25th January GULP!