DailyHaiku - A Daily Shot Of Zen

Gary Barwin

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and performer. He writes in a range of genres: poetry, fiction, visual poetry, sound works, and writing for children and young adults. Barwin received a PhD in Music Composition from SUNY at Buffalo. His books include Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth (fiction; The Mercury Press), Raising Eyebrows (poetry; Coach House), and Outside the Hat (poetry; Coach House). The Original Middle of Nowhere, a new book of poetry, is forthcoming from Coach House Press.

derek beaulieu

derek beaulieu is the author of 6 books of poetry and conceptual writing. His most recent book is chains (paper kite press, 2008) a collection of non-semantic lettraset-based concrete poetry. beaulieu's conceptual novel flatland: a romance of many dimensions was published in 2007 in a limited edition by Simon Morris’s acclaimed press information as material (York, UK). His second conceptual novel, Local Colour, is forthcoming from ntamo (Finland) in 2008.

Poems reprinted from frogments from the frag pool: haiku after basho by Gary Barwin and derek beaulieu (The Mercury Press, 2005) with permission from the authors. Book information: Paperbound, 112 pp., $17.95 Can. ISBN-13: 978-1-55128-112-4

a munifesto (of sorts)

Unku are haiku-esque minimal poems that revel in word play experiments, enigmas, and the instability (inner stability?) of language. Eschewing strict haiku structure while maintaining its emphasis on an economy of words, unku often conflate binaries into one another: maximal into minimal, noise into silence, complexity into simplicity, and their converses. My hope is to provoke the reader’s active participation in the poems, to force her/him to construct meaning from a razed state where all possibilities are valid, where all preconceived notions of identity, language and logic are dismantled. Unku makes us strangers to ourselves by posing questions rather than painting pictures.

Un speaks from a non-place of silence, stillness, absence, and emptiness where erasure becomes rapture.

Influences that have proved invaluable to my process: Dennis Lee's un (Anansi, 2003), Mark Truscott's Said Like Reeds or Things (Coach House, 2004), Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (Dover Publications, 1997), and the selections from still water by bpNichol found in The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol reader (Coach House, 2007).

Constructive comments & questions welcome at un.ku@live.com.

glenN robsoN

glenN robsoN is one half of the sound poetry duo Tonguebath (with Jeff Carpenter). A graduate of the University of Alberta with a BA in Creative Writing/English, glenN continues his voracious devotion to all facets of the avant garde. He writes and lives in Edmonton and thanks you for reading.