Haiku 1

our bowed heads reflect
on spirals; brittle bodies,
floating question marks

Simon Clarke on Flickr

As a collaboration with Mr. Kattsir's English class the Grade 7 is exploring how to illustrate Haiku poems. Things we talked about this week in class were:

A haiku is a form of poetry that is usually about nature and emotion, it originated in Japan, it can be somewhat open-ended and it does not need to rhyme. I told you the story about Sergei Eisenstein (Russian filmmaker) who was inspired by the haiku to develop montage (editing) in film. Based on this idea I gave you the following poem by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694):

An old pond!
A frog jumps in -
The sound of water

I then asked you to draw 3 frames in your Development Sketchbooks and to create an illustration for each line of the haiku. Almost like a comic strip, you illustrated the poem and told the story without words. Your drawings had to be black-line only, no shading, no colouring, just varieties of line. The second haiku that you drew was also by Basho:

In all the rains of May
There is one thing nor hidden -
The bridge at Seta Bay