Dick Whyte & Laurence Stacey - Before the Earth: Haiku & Haikai (2024)

New Book Release!!!!!

Hi everyone,

I am very excited to announce the official release of Before the Earth, a collection of haiku and haikai by Laurence Stacey (from Powder Springs, Georgia, in the US), and myself, Dick Whyte (from Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington, in Aotearoa/NZ). Copies are now available in paperback and Kindle. Check out the video above for an unboxing and discussion about the process of making the book, and some thoughts on haiku.

Though Laurence and I have been writing and studying haikai together for close on 18 years, this is our first major collaborative book of our own poems. We've spent the last year editing it, and feel that it represents some of our finest work in the field of haiku and collaborative haikai renga.

The book itself contains two sections of poems—taking inspiration from the Shōmon anthologies of the Bashō school, and those of Yahantei, under Yosa Buson’s leadership—with standalone haiku in the front, arranged by season, and often topic—and haikai renga (collaborative linked-verses) in the back, showing a more playful, often fictional, mercurial approach. The hokku are all recent, composed between 2018-2022, and the renga are from 2012-2013, back when we were writing a lot of collaborative verse (something we have returned to recently—if you’re curious, check out our latest renga, published by the journal Under the Bashō). Here’s a few sample poems from the book;

    
     spring frogs—
     our stories of life
     after war
                ls

     making
     a leaf out of words . . .
     new gods
                dw

     storm yellowing a sky of insects
                ls

     waiting
     for the revolution:
     wildflowers
                dw

     between jobs—
     the back and forth
     of crows
                ls

     winter moon the stars have teeth
                dw
    

Many thanks to all the readers of Forgotten Poets for the constant support in the way of community kindness, likes, shares, comments. I appreciate it so so much! Everything here at Forgotten Poets is free, with no paywalls or ads, and I intend to keep it that way. However, if you are in a position to help us out financially, please consider buying a book—it would really help (if you do, and you feel so inclined, leaving a review also really helps)!

I don’t do a lot of promotion on here, but Forgotten Poets has also published a number of collections of out-of-print and obscure poets from the 1900s-1920s, which make great Xmas gifts for poets and poetry lovers, if you’re looking for ideas—and if you get one at the same time as mine and Laurence’s book you can save on postage, and get even more poetic goodness! Each book is beautifully laid out, and includes prints and illustrations by forgotten artists and illustrators—check out some examples here.

So far the catalogue includes the tanka of Jun Fujita, translations of tanka by Yosano Akiko, Takeko Kujō, and Akiko Yanagiwara, Harlem Renaissance poets Lewis Alexander—who also wrote haiku and tanka—and Gwendolyn Bennett, Imagists like T.E. Hulme and F.S. Flint, avant-garde and experimental poets like Dada artist Mina Loy, and Jessie Dismorr, who worked with the Vorticists, the ‘new verse’ of Djuna Barnes, and many others.

And if you’re reading this with no intention of doing any of these things, but just enjoy the content, much love as well! I appreciate every single one of you. I really didn’t know if anyone would read this newsletter when I started it, and the fact that there are now over 500 people who choose to get it delivered to their inbox every week, that just blows me away!

It’s a few days away from the one year anniversary of Forgotten Poets, and I have some exciting news about paid subscriptions and other bits and pieces coming up, so keep a look out for that in the next week or so.

Vespers

Poems by Dick Whyte, and other miscellanea. Explore the archive . . .