Reviews

Some authorities have suggested that Bashō, in his well-known Narrow Road to the North, used renga sequencing to arrange his haibun and haiku. These four people, in four countries, have done what Bashō could not do, that is to write haibun and haiku in the renga form collaboratively. Kudos on a job well-done!

Jane Reichhold - author of Basho: The Complete Poems

In this ground-breaking Quartet, strung haibun 'tie the moment down'. Now they harmonise with those that flank them, now they provide a counterpoint. This is the haibun form taken to its next level in the skilled hands of four leading contemporary exponents. If it's true that "we're all contributing to one enormous poem", then with this work it's clearly time to 'step from the kerb and join their parade'.

Ynes Sanz

Quartet is a new & fresh approach to the haibun genre, with participants from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and England. This is taking haibun to the outer limits. Like a renku with 36 links it dips and dives from one continent to another. We encounter turtles, needlework, numerous butterfl ies & a bank robbery. The haibun average out at a hundred words each. Like the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, we visit Taoist immortals on Mt.Penglai ( J.W.); a cycad becomes a mantra ( J.H.); a house evoking deja vu (P.P.); giggles at Benediction (D.W). As I sit here, listening to a Beethoven piano sonata on the radio, sun streaming through the window, drinking a cup of sake, reading Quartet now, isn’t that what enjoyment is all about.

Bill Wyatt

Quartet is innovative, refreshing and delightful. The linkages are intuitive and appealing to the western mind - playful, free and sometimes repetitive - rather than rigidly formal as in classical Japanese renga. This approach has resulted in a highly successful, and enjoyable, collaboration that others will be tempted to follow.

Cyril Childs

Proudly published by Post Pressed

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Extract

1 -- JH Turtle Sketch

At the museum I sketch a turtle for my granddaughter. We peg it to the children's comment board.
The video told us a turtle's sex is determined by the temperature of the sand around the eggs. At 26C males, at 32C females, around 30C fifty-fifty. A long time it was not known where turtles grew through their juvenile years. This Sargasso or that, small and hidden.
In our long South-East Queensland drought it is an unseasonably cool, drizzly December. The sketched turtle is swimming up and to the right. It is swimming toward the temperature of the future.

hatchling turtles
swim out to the sunrise
from tide washed tracks

2 -- DW Thread

I always hated needlework, was once disgraced for rudeness to the sewing teacher. But as an aunt I really want to try.
He slowly takes shape from pieces of brown and dark green velvet, a mound of stuffing and large orange stitches.
My niece, grown up now, a researcher for TV nature programmes, married to a wildlife film producer, their baby son born to a CD of whalesong...

30 year old toy,
head and feet poke from his shell
still intact

3 -- JW Parade

I am drawn along by the fat man with the stogie in his mouth, with red suspenders and pants too short for him, with his big marching drum and his close companions -- the wiry guy with thick eyeglasses and brassy tuba, the little fellow with well-groomed moustache and accordion.
"Why are they marching?" I ask a bystander. He shrugs and turns away.

a squeezebox
that's where it begins,
The spring wind

Some children follow and two or three diminutive dogs -- yapping, playful, short-haired strays. I step from the curb and join their parade.

4 -- PP Offshore

Almost summer. A flotilla of fishing boats in the marina.
He says the limit for each diver is ten.
I measure the first with my hand. It's too small. It's the same for the second and third. The next is the size of a saucer - 'a keeper' - grey, crusted, ugly, but I know inside the paua shell has the blue/green iridescence of the ocean. I tuck it into the bag at my waist. Five or six more are enough for our barbecue.
Making the 'OK' sign to Toby, I rise to the surface.

first dive --
on the sun-baked rocks
a drying wetsuit

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