Feathered Skies - an e-Chapbook of Haiku
I’m a birdwatcher and I blog about, well birds. More recently I’ve been writing haiku about birds.
swift s-c-r-e-a-m across the summer sky
It’s 2.30 in the morning and our dogs are barking. I grope for the back door, and let them out. Silence. Back to bed. Half an hour later more barking - out we go again. Shadows dance in the light of the flower moon. An owl hoots from the nearby woods. And a magpie curses. Back to bed. More barking. I give in and get up. Dawn breaks on the hill.
first light the pink of chaffinch in the cherry
This one-line haiku is from a short collection of haiku recently published as an e-Chapbook by Proletaria. 1 It’s my first time ‘in print’ as it were. Chuffed or what!
It comprises 15 poems - 3 Monostitch, 8 Monoku and 4 modern 3-line Haiku.
You can read and download (PDF) the collection by following the link here: ‘Feathered Skies’. It looks great on a Kindle.
Artist Credit
The featured print of Swift is by Leo Paul Robert (1851-1923). Typical of his work - the birds pictured against a stylised background of almost thundery clouds. You can almost hear them!
A short biography can be found here: Biography
Postscript
Our dogs don’t usually bark at night - not without reason anyway. But I never did find out what set them off this time. Perhaps it was the faeries ...
moonlighting flower fairies in the night garden
Footnotes
- proletaria is a journal and e-chapbook publisher dedicated to the art of literary one-liners. Taking the form of the monostich, monoku/ one-line haiku or anecdotal statements. These single line or single sentence verses are inspired by politics, philosophy and the phenomena of all worldly and natural events happening around us.
Your night time disturbance may not have done you much good at the time, but it resulted in this atmospheric post! I’ve downloaded the chapbook and will enjoy reading it – congratulations Clive!
What a lovely comment Andrea. Thank you! I find that shorter prose pieces with one or two haiku seems to work well for me.
Hi Clive, I visited the link given Feathered skies, i found the pages blank except for few words. Please ignore my message if you found everything alright.
Hi, I’m sorry not to have replied but your comment got dumped straight to the bin. Luckily I hadn’t cleared it out!
Here is a direct link to my chapbook on the proletaria web site.
https://proletaria730964817.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/feathered-skies.pdf
Hope this works for you.
Thank you Clive
I love the idea of a one liner. Might help me get through my poetry challenge. I love the way you take us through your sleepless night. Don’t we just love our dogs. At least brings out a wonderful creative piece.
Our dogs were unsettled for a few nights running. They are trained to bark at anyone approaching the house – but lately have taken to barking at anyone walking in the lane (since lockdown our lane has become a popular walking area with people out at all times of the day!).
Such are the changes when people discover their local lanes!
Just been on your link. These one liners are a wonderful tribute to our feathered friends. Think I need to go on the prolataria website though to review or download. Could I make reference to these and share one of the one liners when I do some more bird poems. With your portrait of swifts, do these old paintings still have copyright?
Glad you like them. And yes the easiest way to get all of them is to download a copy from proletaria. If you have problems let me know and I can probably email you a copy. You’re more than welcome to share them or use them when you write your own poems – which are very lovely. As to copyright of the pictures, as far as I know none exists, though where possible I seek permission before using.
Thanks for that as I was thinking of different ways of illustrating my run of poems. It’s suddenly so hot here I am exhausted by everything! Will have a go on proletaria and hope it works.
Very interesting Clive! I enjoyed reading your “Feathered Skies” although I admit that I’m not sure about the one-line form! Good luck with the e-chapbook. I’ve been able to download it easily enough.
Thanks Ashley. I sort of started them by accident when in a previous post I had some that didn’t comfortably fit the three-line form but still seemed to have some poetry. I got a lot of encouraging feedback and at the same time stumbled on the proletaria site. So I took a punt!
The blunt heads of the swifts in the painting remind me of the swifts who flew into our bathroom when I was a child, and got stuck on the level floor. We put them on our tilted hands for them to get the right angle to fly away again. Extraordinary life, always on the slant, the sheer, the slope; explosive power of flight. Feathered skies and thunder! As you can imagine I find the idea of one-line haiku poetry challenging, and I like yours! It can evoke a single combined sound or scent.
What a coincidence Jane. I too had childhood encounters with Swift – hand rearing a couple when builders destroyed their nest in a friends house. I fed them on a mixture of tinned dog food and blackfly. When ready to fledge I just threw them up into the air and away they flew. I hope they made it.
I think I enjoy writing one-liners most at the moment. And was thrilled when I had some published.
How exciting, Clive, congratulations! I’ve taken a very quick peek and look forward to downloading it onto my kindle as you advise. Thank you!
Thanks Sandra. These just happened to work! I hope I haven’t misled you about the Kindle – it works on the App on my phone but my wife can’t read it on her Kindle (a very early edition). Will you be kind enough to let me know either way. Thanks!
[…] And here is Clive Bennett’s one-line haiku together with this painting on his website, “Art in Nature“: […]
So absolutely fascinating Jane. Makes thoughtful reading – its beginning to make some sort of sense. Thank you for including my haiku.
Congratulations, Clive! I enjoyed reading your post and sympathise with you about the barking dogs. I have downloaded your chapbook and have read it and enjoyed it. I will be revisiting it to savour it more slowly.
Thank you Clare. One of those times when, if it hadn’t been for the dogs, I would have missed the ‘moment’. It was so beautiful. The poem says it all …
I had read the ‘Feathered Skies’ sometime ago, but read them again now. Enjoyed the haiku a lot…especially Dawn Breaks and First Light. Mine had appeared sometime ago, titled ‘Pinewood Hills’. Would you like to read it? Thank you so much for visiting my latest post.
Hi, I did read it some time ago but there seems nowhere to leave a ‘like’ or review on the Proletaria website. I’ll certainly go and read it again later today.
I especially like ‘lovers park’ and ‘Back Home’
As you now know, I’ve just downloaded your published work and you so deserve to be chuffed…how brilliant is that! And I love the style of this artwork, capturing the movement of the swifts.
I’m so glad you liked it Helen. The timing just happened to be right – some poets have to wait years before they get published. I feel very lucky. Maybe one day I’ll have enough material for a book …