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Radio New Zealand’s Culture 101 sat down with SCP Editor Evan Mantyk to talk about the SCP’s Haiku Competition, the SCP, and the history of the haiku. Listen here:
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Original Haiku Featured in the Interview:
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The cold lake shimmers
Softly lapping on the shore
Fifty years and more
—Evan Mantyk
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Patrick, thank you so much for your thoughtful words. I’m really glad the deeper layers came through for you —…
Russel, I always enjoy your poems!
James, I know you know the story of Jonah and the whale and the gourd plant (or whatever kind of…
The first two lines pretty much sum up the single truest idea about our universe, in my opinion, and I…
This is a good poem with excellent rhymes and solid metrics. It is a rhetorical apostrophe to an absent person.…
I really loved your closing haiku that you wrote regarding the 50th anniversary of your in-laws in New Zealand with the subtle alliteration. What a great tribute and sentiment of “more.”
Evan, great interview—and your haiku really captures the place and meaning of your in-laws’ fiftieth anniversary. I like your use of consonance and restraint. I also noticed the rhyme which reminded me of Kenneth Yasuda. He was a Japanese-American poet who believed that English haiku could use rhyme and still stay true to the spirit of the form. I think he’d have appreciated the way your poem blends tradition with personal feeling. Great job!
Evan, thanks once again for doing this interview. I can tell you, from reading entries in our haiku competition, that Culture 101 with your instruction and the interviewer’s encouragement, has brought in a number of haiku clearly representing New Zealand!