Hello, welcome, thank you for your visit.
I have to guess what has brought you here. Wanting to buy one of my books, perhaps? I should be so lucky! But we may come to that in a moment, first you might like some personal background.
I am known to a sparse but worldwide community
of enthusiasts as a champion of the genres we call
English haiku and English haibun. Of both I have
indeed had an inordinate number published.
I have also written quite a few essays, articles, reviews,
and been part of numerous workshops, seminars,
readings, as well as haiku presentations in schools
and colleges. Do I think of myself as an éminence grise?
No, rather a partially informed Japonist, who adds
to his native cultural heritage some inspirations
from the artistic ethos of an exotic land and people,
and who tries to indigenise some of their principles
and practice without descending into pastiche.
So I write haiku in both the supposedly
prescribed 17 syllables, but mainly in free verse form
(working to the Blundellian Axiom, ‘chuck it out
the window and see if it will fly.’) My rule of thumb
is to use the minimum words needed to reveal
the effect (or surprise) latent in some thing
or event that catches my eye (or other sense.)
Michael McClintock, one of the foremost
American critics, has this to say about my style:
“gentle, melancholy, ruminative aspects
make his poems distinctive among
contemporary English-language haiku”
“they bring order out of memory”
“among all the haiku poets who flourish today
in Britain, (he is) one of the least Eastern-inflected
and most independent of Japanese influences”
“a leader in the evolution of the migration
into haiku of the values of senryu”
Since the mid-1990s I have been a pioneer in developing the English language haibun, an amalgamation of haiku and senryu with suitable prose.
If you have suffered this far without clicking me off, thank you so much for your patience!
|