The Gentle Art of Disappearing

Abstract

In the twenty-first century the word haiku has entered the lingua franca of poetry to indicate ‘One-breath poetry, traditionally 17 syllables (5–7–5), now increasingly practised outside Japan as a free-style form, usually in three lines’ (Rosenstock 2009a). All over the world readers and practitioners of haiku communicate through associations and journals in Japan, in the English-speaking countries including India, the Caribbean and Africa. The World Haiku Festival is organized by the World Haiku Club, which was established in 1998 in the United Kingdom to help disseminate and develop an increasingly international form. It was first held in Oxford and London in 2000. Since then it has taken place in various countries including Italy, Japan, Romania and India. The 2010 festival, which was organized by Japanese haiku poet and critic Susumu Takiguchi, marked the tenth anniversary of the event and was hosted in Nagasaki. Submissions were invited in English, and any type of haiku was welcome, traditional or non-traditional, the only evaluation criterion being quality.