NZ Kigo - to use or not to use? by Vanessa Proctor

Kigo or seasonal words are an essential part of haiku, providing the necessary link between man and the natural world. They distinguish the form from senryu and place poems firmly in the seasonal calendar. For hundreds of years the Japanese have used saijiki, books which list seasonal words accompanied by examples of haiku to show their proper usage.

Haiku express universal experiences through the specific. The “aha” moment in haiku is possible for the reader because of shared experience. This means that we can read contemporary haiku from any part of the world, or even work written hundreds of years ago and identify with it because it touches upon what it means to be human. However, it is with the details that we can run into problems because from country to country the specifics are naturally different.

Matsuo Basho's maxim, “Learn of the pine from the pine; learn of the bamboo from the bamboo”1 , still rings true over three centuries later. We gain inspiration from and write about what we see, which means that in New Zealand we are less likely to be writing about Japanese pines and bamboo and more likely to be writing about kahikatea and kowhai.

Because of this, sending work overseas can be problematic for us Southern Hemisphere poets. It's true to say that the majority of haiku journals are published in the Northern Hemisphere and that these journals abound with Northern Hemisphere flora and fauna. Some editors are unwilling to publish work with seasonal words with which they are unfamiliar. Others are more open to seasonal words from other parts of the world. However, this can lead to misunderstandings.

I'm sure many NZPS members will remember the “Great Possum Debate” a couple of years ago where a reviewer in the British magazine Presence was nonplussed by a haiku of Nola Borrell's about a fearsome possum. The reviewer wasn't sure what a possum was and didn't think of it as being scary. As a result of the debate that followed, Martin Lucas, the editor of Presence took the initiative and suggested a section of possum haiku called The Eyes Have It. I was fortunate enough to collect haiku from both sides of the Tasman, albeit with greatly differing views of possums. This was a great way to expose New Zealand culture to Northern Hemisphere readers.

So the question is, should we be sending distinctly New Zealand haiku overseas? There is certainly room for it in New Zealand magazines such as Kokako. Of course it's up to the individual poet to decide, but I feel that it's important to make our presence as New Zealanders felt in the world haiku arena without necessarily fitting neatly into the mainstream American or British haiku mould.

New Zealand haiku has more than an exotic value; it's a chance to showcase our country. So if we are going to send such haiku overseas, do we use footnotes for words that our Northern Hemisphere readers may not understand? Haiku are such short poems that footnotes can overwhelm them. I believe it's up to our readers to look things up for themselves. A case for footnotes could however be made in longer works such as haibun.

A more interesting solution than the use of footnotes is to make regional collections of seasonal words and make them available overseas. William Higginson's Haiku World2 is an excellent English-language saijiki which includes seasonal words from, as the title suggests, around the world. However, perhaps it is time to celebrate regional diversity further by compiling regional saijiki. David Cobb of the British Haiku Society won the Sasakawa prize a few years ago with a saijiki that he compiled of British seasonal words. Here in the Southern Hemisphere we have unique fauna and flora - a vast well of inspiration for poets. Should we not have our own saijiki too?

In this era of globalisation where international haiku is more accessible than ever through the internet, it's important that we celebrate our own unique environment. Let's be true to our experience and take New Zealand haiku to the world!

Footnotes:

1 Basho, quoted in William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook, (New York: Kodansha International 1985), 10.

2 William J. Higginson, Haiku World. An International Poetry Almanac, (New York: Kodansha International 1996).

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Editor's Note: Vanessa Proctor is a well-known “Kiwi” haijin resident in Australia whose work is published regularly around the world. She has written this article especially for this webpage.

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