Tag Archives: barry george

Barry George and SIRENS AND RAIN

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, Sirens and Rain.

Sirens and Rain is a book of haiku and senryu (haiku-like poems focusing on human nature) about life in and around Philadelphia. People, animals, trees, fountains, statues, trains, life in all forms as it reveals itself in quintessential moments. With its unique variety of human and (other) natural phenomena, I have found this city to be an ideal place to write these “sketches from life.” The poems in this book came to me over a number of years—as I walked to work, taught my classes, rode my bicycle around the Schuylkill River, and otherwise encountered city life. (Note: the word “haiku” is both singular and plural; the same is true for “senryu.”)

What do you like most about it?

I like how the book is a history, in poetry, of what life was like for my wife, my cats, and me during the years we lived near the corner of 20th and Chestnut Streets. This is the intersection shown in the photograph I took for the cover. A few of the poems were written after we moved from there to another place just around the corner.

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

By the time I began working on the manuscript that became Sirens and Rain, I had plenty of haiku and senryu that could have conceivably been included. So the challenge was to select and arrange the best poems, or the best combination of poems, for the effect I wanted. Organizing by seasons helped; that way I could break the poems into five separate sequences (the four seasons plus a fifth chapter for late summer through early fall). In arranging the poems, I tried to juxtapose nature poems and people poems that played off one another in interesting ways. This entailed many rounds of revisions. You might say that the actual composing of the book was a matter of moving 3 X 5 cards around over and over again.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

As with haiku and senryu generally, I hope the poems in this book make readers more keenly, and in most cases more pleasurably, aware of what they encounter moment by moment in life. One of the best effects poems like these can have is to evoke for the reader a thought-feeling like, “Oh, I’ve had that experience—or seen that sight—a hundred times, but before never noticed it in all its beauty and wonder.” Or humor and charm, as the case might be. 

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

Because haiku and senryu can appeal so readily not only to poets and poetry enthusiasts but to folks who don’t often read poetry, I am always gratified when I learn that my brother-in-law, neighbor, landlord’s son, or high school Facebook friend “gets” and likes my poems. As for a specific interaction, I had an especially fulfilling one last fall when I visited a class that was reading Sirens and Rain as an assigned text for their Community College of Philadelphia literature course. Owing probably in no small part to how well their professor had guided their week-long study of my book, I found the students extremely engaged in and curious about writing haiku. They asked incisive questions. Then, in a kind of workshop format, I went around the room helping them with the short collections they were assigned to write. Almost to a person, perhaps TO a person, they were writing original haiku about subjects that mattered to them. As I left the classroom, literally, I felt a chill go down my spine. We had given a lot to one another.

What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of Sirens and Rain.

The most significant recent event in my writing life is that I just finished the manuscript that is the successor to Sirens and Rain. Entitled “Unofficial Portraits,” it consists of haiku and senryu that portray people by focusing on a moment or detail that is especially revealing about each person’s character. As with Sirens and Rain, the subjects span a range of settings, including work, education, neighbors, law and politics, sports, and family.

Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

Why aren’t haiku about sports (other than baseball) more widely appreciated? Not a particularly pressing question but a pet peeve of mine.

Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku (Accents Publishing, 2010)

Poet Barry George answers questions about Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku (Accents Publishing, 2010)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

At the time my book, Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, was published in 2010, I had just graduated from the Brief-Residency MFA program at Spalding University. I had been writing haiku for about fifteen years, and in the two years at Spalding had concentrated on studying and writing haiku, as well as tanka. Katerina Stoykova was a classmate of mine, and her ambition to start Accents coincided with my eagerness to have a book of haiku published. Most of the poems in Wrecking Ball are taken from my Creative Writing Thesis at Spalding. I remember that after assembling the longer thesis (which included haiku, tanka, and longer poems), the selection and ordering of the haiku for Wrecking Ball just kind of fell into place.

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Yes. I still like the poems and the sequence in which they appear. It was my first chapbook, so it will always have a special meaning for me.

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

An important goal of mine is to write poetry that is enjoyed not only by other poets and poetry enthusiasts, but also by folks who don’t generally read contemporary poetry. So what I especially have valued are the comments I’ve received, from various people, that Wrecking Ball is a book they’ve kept close by on the nightstand, or on the coffee table or hair salon counter for themselves and their guests to read.
What didn’t make it in the book?

My only wish is that it could have been longer, that it could have included more poems. But I do like the spare format of only one haiku per page. And I feel fortunate that my Wrecking Ball haiku seemed to be well-suited for the first generation of Accents publications: in-house printed chapbooks sold at a popular price.

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Since haiku are short, I would like to share a pair of them that represent two different stages of a related theme.

after the storm
he is rich in umbrellas—
the homeless man

 

older
wearing glasses now
the homeless man

 

How did you arrive at the title?

I wanted to emphasize that this was a collection of urban haiku, poems that adapt the traditional forms of haiku and senryu (haiku-like poems about human nature) to city life. One of the poems is about a “wrecking ball” that “swings in and out of darkness.” Since a wrecking ball is not usually what comes to mind when one thinks about haiku, I thought that image, as a title, would emphasize and draw attention to the somewhat unusual, even iconoclastic, nature of the urban-themed haiku.

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I especially like Barbara Sabol’s Original Ruse for its playfulness and the variety of forms Barbara uses to develop different aspects of her theme.

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

I would like to see Accents, in either its journal or published books, encourage experimentation with writing that considers the ways that our assumptions and perceptions about what it means to be human are, necessarily, changing in light of the climate emergency.

What are you working on now?

First, let me mention that I have something new coming out from Accents Publishing later this year!—a book of haiku called Sirens and Rain, which explores beyond Wrecking Ball the varieties of urban life in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, I am writing the haiku, senryu, and tanka that occur to me on my daily rounds—or, as often as not—in the middle of the night. I am most interested in finding poetic ways not merely to express an observation about “nature” or “human nature” as something separate from “me,” but to embody an intimation of my essential unity with other aspects of creation.
Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

A tanka:

this river now
I’m falling through
what surfaces
I once considered
ice