This month I was expecting to read from Going In With Flowers, at a poetry gathering in Durham and at the Howard League for Penal Reform’s International Conference in Oxford. I was also planning meetings with family, friends and other writers, mostly in cafes, where I like to hang out…But these are extraordinary and difficult times and I won’t be doing any of the above in the foreseeable future.
So how to spend our days while we take care of ourselves and others, where we draw back from the world, into the space of self and home? Writers, I would venture, are good at this, sometimes longing for the isolation that insists we get on and write. Aeons of free time stretching ahead of us, can fill us with optimism.
I have a list of creative things I want to do. One of these is to keep a Renga diary which is something I’ve done before, inspired by Linda France’s beautiful Book of Days
Renga is a traditional form of collaborative verse dating from 10th century Japan where poets would gather and write verses together, whilst drinking tea or saki – subjects were the natural world, love, the moon and all phenomena vulnerable to change. The first verse of 3 lines – the hokku is the origin of the haiku and is followed by a two line verse.
In renga each verse must have some connection with the preceding one but also depart from it, avoiding repeating a word or an idea. So the renga is carried forward, mirroring the flow of our lives, always changing, never still.
What is remarkable about renga, which you discover later, is the way it so uniquely captures time, a very particular time, the essence of it, so that even five years on, reading back over old renga diaries, a day will spring into life and memory.
Here is the start of my diary begun after a walk across the fields yesterday, following the pattern of 3 lines, followed by 2….:
Sat March 14th
My boots uncertain in the mud
where sheep have been
rain in the wind
No kiss, our meeting at a distance
snowdrops adrift in the woods
Renga can just as easily reflect the beauty of indoors, of the view from a window – it can be serious, it can be funny, political, philosophical…. It can be whatever you make it. Why not join me and keep your own renga diary. I promise, if you do you will have a unique record of your days and the focus will be entirely yours…
I will be posting my renga most days and also my postcard collages, more of that tomorrow
