{"id":16965,"date":"2023-06-19T20:31:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T15:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?p=16965"},"modified":"2023-11-04T01:15:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T20:15:25","slug":"haiku-haiku-by-brecken-hancock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/haiku-haiku-by-brecken-hancock\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiku Haiku"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Nancy Jo Cullen on Brecken Hancock\u2019s \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Arc Poetry Magazine has been involved with VERSeFest, Ottawa\u2019s annual international festival of poetry, since its inception. So it is fitting that we are publishing Brecken Hancock\u2019s \u201cHaiku Haiku,\u201d a celebration of the poets and poetry of VERSeFest 2021. \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d is an engaging study of poetic voice, as is her introduction to the poem, where the poet breaks down her writing process. Brecken\u2019s introduction invites us to think about how a poem works, how a poet works, and how a gathering of poets works to foster much-needed conversation and community. \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d is a celebration of this potential.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Preface to \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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As the VERSeFest 2021 poet-in-residence, I was commissioned to write a poem in response to the festival. To find a way to adequately engage with the incredible lineup of poets, and the experience of hearing their work at the 20 festival events, I wanted to bring the more than 70 voices together in a collective study. I recorded the titles of writers\u2019 featured books (or, in some cases, the title of the first piece they read in their performances, if they hadn\u2019t launched a book yet) as a list, one title stacked on another and so on. I also surveyed the diversity of languages represented, including for poets who wrote in one language but noted in their bios or in their performances their identification with another language. These two lists formed the basis of the conceptual exercise: I used an online translator to run the list of works through the series of languages and finally, because I\u2019m an anglophone poet working in English, I translated them all into English. Some titles are unrecognizable, some bear their own shadow, and some were virtually unchanged by the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, I tasked myself to keep the phantom titles intact (in terms of word order, not meaning or grammar), but I juxtaposed them in new ways until they gelled. I did not adhere to punctuation or case. In two places, the translations resulted in words that exist in no language, and I left them. Significantly, I must note that while there are online dictionaries containing some Algonquin and Cree translations, there are no AI translators of either Algonquin or Cree. Louise Bernice Halfe\u2019s (Sky Dancer\u2019s) aw\u00e2sis – kinky and dishevelled<\/em> translated to \u201cconfusion collected by awasis.\u201d Thus, aw\u00e2sis<\/em> did not translate from its original Cree, other than to lose the circumflex, and remains mostly intact\u2014it means \u201ca child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I started playing within these constraints, another filter arose organically. Dave Read\u2019s Fifty at Fifty: My Haiku<\/em> and Jeanne Painchaud\u2019s Mon <\/em>\u00e9t<\/em>\u00e9 ha\u00efku<\/em> became 50 to 50: My haiku<\/em> and, simply, season elided, my haiku<\/em>. These were the only signposts of poetic form, and they were duplicative, insistent. Late in the process, the poem seemed to assert that it wanted to be a series of haiku. This changed the rhythms again, and in some cases forced me into new re-arrangements. While my earlier rules didn\u2019t allow for all stanzas to fall into perfect 5\/7\/5 syllabic patterns, I tried to remain true to the mood of haiku\u2014something terse but rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together, these metamorphic titles speak to a collective anxiety about poetry\u2019s use-value in the face of intractable disease, systemic racism, institutionally sanctioned violence, climate change, and other trauma. We\u2019ve been living through three years of a global pandemic now, and, at the time I wrote this VERSeFest poem (February 2022), we\u2019d plummeted toward possible world war. That threat continues to loom, as do many compounding, ever increasing, threats to civil rights, environmental health, and our very survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a new question, but it persists: do we need more poetry? What I know from working with these poets\u2019 words is that *we* <\/strong>need it\u2014those of us who gather together to share our work and hold each other up. Probably each of us has a voice in our minds that tells us poems are unwanted. But we grapple with that voice, and, in the end, the existential argument itself is what fuels us to record what we see, and to record what we feel about what we see. Is there another way? Not for us. We look out at the world and it moves us to despair, but also strange forms of joy\u2014and always awe. We come back to the page; we write more about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brecken Hancock
Ottawa, June, 2023<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Haiku Haiku<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
I have something to\ntell you, Frank. Carrot-red dress\non the body of\n\nour Plexiglas\ntower: the trash is awake\n& viruses make\n\nlittle wolves to get\nused to. The first 3 months, I\nslept slowly. Fear of\n\nthe future (an\nescalator) put the devil\nin us. Welcome, Cyrus\u2014\n\nmost Anglo-Saxon\nOttawa, everything we\nthink: Me. I have a\n\npainful allergy\nto my roots; you want to be\nsomeone else.\n\n.\n\nWalt Whitman told me\ndirectly, poems are un-\nwanted, cosmos\u2019\n\nletter is boring.\nStop presenting the latest\nwomen\u2019s poetry\n\nin Quebec 2000-\n2020. No false\ninterview with a\n\u2003\nCanadian author\non differences in writing\n(psychological\n\ngarden &\naccompanying booklet).\nBiographical words\u2014\n\nthese are cancer, black\nroots & yellow leaves. Me, you\n& Shelley know that life.\n\n.\n\nIs a rainbow 50\nto 50 grace & fear? Earth \nenters the radar\u2014\n\nunknown country, magic,\nits black salt, the south wind.\nExposure\u2019s the reason\n\nfor the flower.\nYou know the ground stars:\norange begonia.\n\n.\n\nGet out of here\nASAP\u2014do you want\nto burn?\n\n.\n\nPostmodernism\nfeatures boredom & my, my\nthe poems are unusual.\n\nIt\u2019s not good to ask\u2014\nDiggrafxt? Intuki? Word\nproblem. Confusion\n\u2003\ncollected by awasis\u2019\ngloves. Cut down a tree. Visit\nzoo attractions. Carry\n\non, planet earth. It\u2019s\nvery important. Honestly:\neat, or we\u2019re both\n\nhungry\u2014With love, from\nPine Crest Creek; St. Boniface;\nKerry; Africa.\n\n.\n\nIs, like, a dream\nbeyond my heart provincial\ndevelopment?\n\nA healthy life?\nThe debt I don\u2019t understand?\nMy feelings\u2019 use of\n\nthe site? Is TV the light\nof love? Answer from you: No.\nWrite more about it.<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n            
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Brecken Hancock<\/a><\/h3>\r\n                    
Brecken Hancock<\/strong> is a poet, essayist and screenwriter whose work has appeared in\u00a0Tolka<\/i>,\u00a0Hazlitt, Best American Experimental Writing,\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Best Canadian Poetry<\/i>. Her first book,\u00a0Broom Broom<\/i>\u00a0(Coach House, 2014), won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, was shortlisted for the ReLit Award, and was named by\u00a0The Globe & Mail<\/i>\u00a0as a debut of the year. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was a finalist for the RBC Emerging Artist Award, and read at the American Library of Congress in Washington D.C. as part of the US\/Canada Capital Poetry Exchange. Brecken\u2019s screenplay \u201cDon\u2019t Tell Me How Nice It\u2019s Gonna Be\u201d\u00a0was a finalist in the 2022 SWN Screenplay Competition & quarterfinalist for Final Draft’s Big Break. She lives in Ottawa.<\/span><\/div>\r\n
<\/div><\/p>\r\n                <\/div>\r\n            <\/div>\r\n          <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nancy Jo Cullen on Brecken Hancock\u2019s \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d Arc Poetry Magazine has been involved with VERSeFest, Ottawa\u2019s annual international festival of poetry, since its inception. So it is fitting that we are publishing Brecken Hancock\u2019s \u201cHaiku Haiku,\u201d a celebration of the poets and poetry of VERSeFest 2021. \u201cHaiku Haiku\u201d is an engaging study of poetic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"1453","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"16394,17284,16691,17822","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1453,2207],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3167],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16965"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17414,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16965\/revisions\/17414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=16965"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=16965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}