Hi everyone!  We have a guest host for Haibun Monday, Xenia Tran.  Grace 

Welcome to Haibun Monday, my name is Xenia Tran and I am delighted to be your guest-host today.

In haibun, prose and verse carry equal weight and combined, they offer us so much more.

As Paresh Tiwari so eloquently put it:

A good haibun plays with a delicate balance where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The haiku when used right, links, shifts and leaps beyond the scope of the prose to enrich the reading experience. If the prose is a meandering path, the haiku are birdcalls. They guide the travellers, not by holding their hand but by telling them that there is more to be explored. The haiku often allow the reader a toe inside the door, or a window to be privy to a parallel scene unfolding in the street below without ever leaving the room. They offer a different vantage point, a new strain of thought.

– Open Journal of Arts and Letters, 18 March 2020

You can read Paresh Tiwari’s full Haibun Uncaged essay here.

***

September is drawing to a close and here in the Scottish Highlands, it is time for woolly jumpers, stacking the stove and enjoying the kind of hearty fare prepared from recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation.

Cullen skink and stovies

a lunch-time line forms

in the rain

Xenia Tran, The Asahi Shimbun, 18 February 2022

Autumn here has just begun, and in haiku and senryu, Autumn can also refer to the autumn of our lives.

tying my shoes

lately the ground

seems so low

Bob Lucky, tinywords 12:1, November 2012

In the Southern hemisphere, September signals Spring, the days are getting longer and surround us with a very different kind of energy.

red berry tea

the birds just starting

to sing

Xenia Tran, Presence #73, July 2022

For today’s Haibun Monday, you are invited to create a haibun about September and a special moment you experienced during this month or are looking forward to.

The prose can be narrative, lyrical or terse and the ku can be either a three-line haiku or a monoku (haiku in a single line).

You can have alternating blocks of prose and verse, as long as the total word count does not exceed 250 words.

I wish you all happy writing and if you are new to dVerse, here’s what to do:

• Write a haibun about a special moment in September and post it on your blog.
• Click on Mr. Linky below to add your name and direct url to your work.
• Add a link for dVerse on your page so others can find us as well.
• Visit other poets on the list to read their poems and comment.
• Visit our virtual pub and say hello.
• Have fun!

About our guest host: Xenia Tran is a Dutch artist, poet and photographer who lives in the Scottish Highlands with her husband and forever foster whippet Misty. She was selected to Krzysztof Kokot’s European Top 100 Most Creative Haiku Authors in 2021 and her haiku, photo haiku and haiga have appeared on NHK World’s Haiku Masters, The Akita World Haiku Series, in video, print and online journals, anthologies, haiku calendars and two full-length collections. She blogs at https://tranature.com and https://whippetwisdom.com