2006-09-16

Linked Verse Collaboration: The Virtual Za

Some of you may have discovered a collaboration between Hototogisu and me. For several weeks now we have been creating a renku-like 36-verse linked poem. Each post is either a two-line or a three-line haiku-like poem in which each verse links in some way to the previous one and goes through the seasons beginning with Summer and ending in Spring. Renku has a long tradition in Japan. We are following many of these traditions but have simplified things in some ways (e.g. Moon, Blossom, and Love references are not mandatory).

Our semi-daily posts appear in The Virtual Za Blog.

In order to keep track of seasons, kigo, link types, and so on, we use the following Google spreadsheet:

The Virtual Za Work Sheet

We invite you to follow along.

2 comments:

J. Andrew Lockhart said...

I'm definitely going to look at it!

Masago said...

Collin: I am glad you are enjoying the renku (which, of course, is a collaboration with hototogisu) and my blog haiku.

The linking process with my blog haiku has been enjoyable and is a slightly different process than with the renku.

With renku one writes a haiku based on a linkage need. However, with my blog haiku, I typically write several haiku from my daily experiences in advance (up to 20-30 at any given time). I then look for natural linkages that are already there. There has only been a couple of cases where I have actully written a haiku strictly for its linkage value.

Andrew: Thanks buddy!