Ivy’s Vine

It’s hard to call this a book

September 29th, 2009

I’ve finished a book of senryu.  It’s a medium length book for a senryu collection–shorter than some and longer than most.  If I sell it, it will probably come in about 60-70 pages with a lot of clip art in the background. It’ll also be called a collection of haiku, which it isn’t.

Haiku not only follows the 5-7-5 rule, it deals with nature.  For true haiku, there must be a kigo or season word (though this can be coded, so cherry blossom means summer) and a kireiji, or turning word, which doesn’t truly exist in English.  It would be a snapshot of a moment, an instant in time in the natural world.  The most famous haiku by the most famous master, Basho, is called “Frog Pond”, and in translation it runs something like this.

old pond
frog jumps in
water’s sound

Of course it holds to thew 5-7-5 in the original

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
What I’ve written is more like

costly to produce
never purchased or consumed
documentation

The focus is on humor and human things, so senryu, but I’m at least smart enough to know “Haiku for Geeks” is more marketable than “Senryu for Geeks” so I’ll name it in error.

It’s hard to think of it as a book.  Printed out as plain old text it runs a whopping ten pages, most of it white space.  But I’ve begun seeking feedback, I’ve put together a list of editors and agents who might be interested in this kind of thing.  I cheated and started my search with publishers who have already published senryu–I mean humorous haiku–collections.  I just hope none of them require the first 15 pages along with the query letter.

Entry Filed under: Poetry, Writing