This week’s Tan RengaChallenge is set by haiku poet Kristjaan Panneman, started by Bastet of“Bastet and Sekhmet’s Library”and this is the haiku (the first stanza) of “the mountain shining
This is the first time also that I have done anything like this, I might be making a complete fool of myself and getting it wrong!
Advice gratefully welcomed.
The haiku chosen was(first stanza):
the mountain shining
first light streaks through the valley
lazy clouds float by
(c) Bastet
The goal is to write the second stanzato complete the Tan Renga.
I was lying in bed, looking out of my window, through the lace curtains and the lovely wooden box that once belonged to my grandmother came to my view. It is tucked infront on the windowsill. I remember when I got this beautiful box that has such lovely detail, such craftsmanship, I had no idea it would be full of items, trinkets, memories of past, perhaps secrets and it inspired me to write a poem.
What on earth is gong on? I gave up English literature at school, simply because I could never memorize poems nor dates, so a no brainer for me to ditch this subject. I have never since either really read poetry, only the silly stuff that generally is for humour more than anything else.
However, since having been on WP, I have discovered a growing love of poetry and or the people that write them. I read something and think to myself OMG how did that just come out of their head, I am literally bemused, amazed, overwhelmed, humbled, star struck and so many other emotions when reading such things.
Since then other things have been popping in to my mind, I see words like Haiku and Haibun and what not, so I was thinking this was some kind of ‘alternative’ way of announcing oneself. It started to confuse me, the poems attached to these Haibun words weren’t the ‘usual’ type, I found it befuddling trying to get my way around the poetry written and these strange words.
Being the kind of person I am, curiosity got the better of me so I started to look up what this all meant, plus pestered a few other bloggers. I found out what it means, though I need to write an actual post on what it means just for me to refer to because it simply makes me go cross eyed at the complexity of the simplicity of it all, if that makes sense? I then spend a whole night unable to sleep trying to think of how to write a poem in such a way..nuts right?
So it just emphasizes the hugeness of it all. Even more of something I could not do. Then somebody reminded me the other day that I used to write a lot in a virtual medium, used to teach creative writing. I looked at them bemused wondering what on earth similarity this had to do with poetry. He seemed to think it ‘was’ poetry just in a different form.
Imagine the setting, an avatar on a sim, it can animated, ie move around and one can play music to listen to that one can choreograph specific animations to work to with the ‘nature’ of the dance, tempo and so forth. On top of this and ‘dressing’ the avatar approprpiately one writes a dance. How do you do this, I hear you ask? This is in a roleplay environment so you have your storyline basis in some way set up within which you make up your own stories to tell.
So how can one perform such a dance?
Graduation dance of my students, Roleplay Gor! Seems the dancers fled hehe
Well if you imagine there is one dancer as in real life, and a group of people that will sit there watching. They are literally watching firstly your avatar move and hearing the music that you have chosen, choreographed to work in time and feeling with what you are about to depict.
Then there is the writing, the dancer aka me perhaps has written a piece which is done on the basis of short sentences, one after the other, perhaps five or so, they are put out on to the screen for people to read whilst listening and watching the avatar. There is a good time allowed before the next set of type is put out on screen, therefore taking the onlooker further in to the journey of the dancer.
One of my graduates!
When one writes a dance like this, it is very important due to the medium and attempting to allow the reader/onlooker to ‘feel’ the dancer that the writer ‘shows’ not tells the audience what is going on. One is expected to not only describe the physical movements of the dancer which should work well with the actual animations but depict all the senses through showing, plus the story that the dancer is going through. A lot to be responsible for right?
I will give a simplistic example (this post is so not turning out how I intended to write it LOL, but I am on a roll now so will continue and be heckled later)
Telling movement:
Sapphire lifted her blue eyes hesitantly towards the crowd as her body taking on a will of its own lifted riddled with fear.
Showing movement:
Sky dusted eyes lifted with a twitch lowering and rising, glances seemingly taken towards the mass of onlookers. Propelled by what seemed nature’s force, limbs prickled with goosebumps swirled with a sense of stiffness in movement, staggering with unsure flow.
See the difference?
The above is a really simplistic example but kinda gives an idea.
Anyway it probably seems silly but I used to teach this in an online environment and was always so so very proud when the writer finally accomplished the show and not tell and wowed the audience with a dance, probably the only bit I miss about my online gaming but heck that is why I am not here pestering you guys 🙂
So I thought I would try some poetry, because I am a complete masochist right? Maybe some Japanese poetry to really stress me out yes?
It's a lonely place 