'Siren Sound' - Arnhem Wharf, London, UK

A Child taken for a short haiku walk in Arnhem Wharf Community Allotment

the pond the water skaters and sirens

Graveyard Walk

Southampton, UK
May 2006

As someone who's poetry is completely bound up with walking the land I'm intrigued by your project, and would be interested to find out more.

Our graveyard walk took place on 13th May.

There were four of us: myself, my wife Robin Furth, Alison Williams and Alan Summers.

The walk took place on the Southampton Common, and took in the old graveyard there and which seemed to provide the most inspiration.

Myself: well, I live in the New Forest, go on long walks as often as possible, have always walked a lot, but the crucial relation of walking to my poetry didn't emerge until our 12 year stint living in the Maine woods... I'd be interested in getting involved in any projects bringing walking and poetry together...

in the graveyard
stone pages
printed with lichen

the weight of the bumblebee
draws down
the clover

rising from
the overgrown grave
the ant nest

up through the crack
in the fallen gravestone
fiddleheads unfurl

Mark Rutter
New Forest, UK

Photos: Alan Summers, Bristol, UK

HAIKU HIKE MAIN PAGE
( find details of how to share your walks here)

CROSOVER UK

Rebecca’s Garden Ginko

Austin Texas USA
Wednesday, May 17

Gray moons, blue
biscuit— gravel
snaps below our feet

the smell of mint!
a cat leaps
over the path

goldfish in the pond…
five slow gulps
then it’s gone

a rainy spring—
mosquitoes enjoy
the buffet

five different mugs
on benches, on the ground—
the meeting of friends

Melanie Alberts

This walk took place in a residential garden in Austin, Texas, USA. The owner is a potter...hence the reference to the "different mugs" she offered us.

Here is a bit about myself:

My poems have been published in small literary journals over the past 20 years. I serve on the board of the Story Circle Network and have written a non-linear, literary memoir. I will soon be leading haiku walks on a regular basis at the retreat center where she works as Event Coordinator. I livee in Austin, Texas with my British husband Chris and
son.

Thanks! I look forward to reading ku from other hikes around the world.

Please visit my blog:

http://widepathpoetry.blogspot.com

M.

HAIKU HIKE MAIN PAGE

CROSSOVER UK

The Haiku-Hike

Tomomi Iguchi

Crossover UK

An interactive community project at London Olympic Development Site

Dates: Saturdays and Sundays from May – October 2006

Haiku is one of the Zen art practices, it is a Japanese short poem (composed of three sentences) that expressed our personal feeling and exposes our state of mind through the seasonal words from the daily life and nature. Haiku has humour and there is a delight in word play.

The Haiku – Hike is the contemporary Haiku poem project for the participation of the local community in east London. The environmental community in Japan will be invited to participate via the website. The walk will take place from Bow to London Olympic Development site past Three Mills and back to Bromley-by-Bow in East London. The records, images and ideas will then be selected for a community art project as a part of Renewability Exhibition at Mile End Park in October 2006. This activity is designed to inspire and stimulate feelings about the surrounding and constantly changing local environment.

We will use digitalised 3G mobile phone as a tool, which is the fast developing, popular personal communication technology for everyday life at present. This small and handy personal device is able to capture peoples feeling, to enable us to share our experience directly with the wide audience. It will provide immediate access to a digital facility as the creative documentation by transferring, optimizing, linking up between the physical and virtual environment. Instead of writing, drawing by analogue tool (pen and brush) such as people did in the past, participants from local community will have the opportunity to express their feelings to interact with the viewers from other partnership organizations through website www.crossover-uk.org.

Local artists who have already experienced mobile culture and Haiku poet Paul Conneally will create a Haiku project program by immediately capturing participant’s information as they walk with local residents in the East End of London. The Haiku-Hike will then reach a much wider audience virtually via website interaction.

Haiku-Hike will enable local people to understand and their community record the changes and transitions both physically and environmentally but also inform a world wide audience via website of new developments in our neighbourhood for the impact of the London Olympic games and their legacy via communication technology.

Haiku-Hike is being developed in partnership with local environmental organizations and leading educational institutions. We will also work closely with the Environment Trust to organise and plan routes for other Haiku-Hikes in the East End of London throughout the year, which will capture changes reflecting the different seasons through out the year.

Tomomi Iguchi

May 2006

We also invite you to send in haiku, video, images from your walks anywhere in the world. We'll show them at this site. Send them to little.onion@ntlworld.com - put 'haiku hike' in the subject line.

CROSSOVER UK