Blue, and O for a gun, by Nigel Jenkins.

Welsh haiku? Now there’s an interesting idea. When I think of haiku, I can’t help but think of Japan and cherry blossoms. Of frogs jumping and the sound of water… I do not think of Swansea Bay, and yet here is Nigel Jenkins releasing his second book of haiku, O for a gun. The previous book, Blue, was the first ever book of haiku released by a Welsh publisher.

I must admit that as a former student of Swansea University I’ve had something of a love affair with the city for several years. I used to visit my older brother and go boozing with his housemates when he was a student of Chemistry at the university, and ever since I’ve been hooked on this vibrant and friendly city.

However, I was slightly alarmed at the idea of writing a review of these books, because what do I actually know about haiku? Not much. The ‘wretched syllable count’ is the first thing that springs to mind, the 5/7/5, to which many haiku conform, and yet even this is not set in stone (the comprehensive Afterwords in both books discuss the haiku form further). Well then, what of the spirit of haiku? For Nigel Jenkins it includes “an innate humility, a disinclination to pass comment, simplicity and a fruitful interplay between the natural and the civilisational.” Ideas which do indeed jump out when reading these collections.

Blue is set over and a year and a day. From morning to night, from winter to winter. These are poems about place and community, about life. Reading them is a two-way street; it is almost as if they strike up a dialogue between reader and poet. Some of these haiku made me laugh aloud, others made me wince and several fair took my breath away. For sheer beauty, I admired these two:

brickies droop with fags,

their half-built house

vaulted by rainbows

 

 

across the acres

of sunsparked snow

the laughter of dogs

 

And for tugging my heartstrings, it was this:

the bunched daffs drool

as she grasps with both hands

her ninetieth spring

 

One of the final haiku in Blue had me chucking like a demented thing:

above the pines

Bonny Tyler’s palace

outshines the moon

In the second volume, O for a Gun, I have a special interest. I think I remember Nigel Jenkins considering a name for this collection and talking about a seagull at Mumbles, caught up in fishing tackle and condemned to a slow death. O for a gun, he thought, and the title was born. At least, that was what I remembered, but I’d doubtless got it wrong, I thought … until I found this:

gull hooked, trailing

from its beak a yard of line –

o for a gun

I remain intrigued by a book of poetry with such a title. Guns, and thoughts of putting suffering animals to death, seemed an unusual starting point for a haiku collection. The cover image – a close-up of a beautiful, rusted gun – is, as we find out in the acknowledgements, a ‘Peacemaker’ rifle of 1870s America, ‘The gun that won the west.’

I wish I could set down more of the haiku here but these I must mention:

two men who never speak—

thrown together by ice,

their hats scattered

 

 

at dawn, as at dusk,

the windows of Swansea

take fire and burn

 

 

behind the dog man

a-swagger with leash –

a damp chihuahua

There is an amazing sense of time passing in these poems, of advancing age. Several times I read one and thought ‘Gawd, I’m old.’ These in particular:

a tree – an ash –

where once, I remember,

was none

 

 

the barmaid I once

craved – creased now, like me,

and double chinned

 

But it is the wry humour that I loved most of all:

half a dog-turd

bejewelled by a feasting

blowfly

 

 

‘cancer…’ she enquires,

noticing my weight loss,

‘or a woman?’

These collections zing. When I read these small poems, tingles start up my spine and I feel privileged to be given access to something that feels real and true and important. In each haiku there is something that resonates and I find myself nodding or smiling, or just thinking about things that have been there in front of me all along, but which I’ve never looked at directly.

I find myself drawn to Blue and O for a gun and both of these slim volumes are starting to look battered, as I’ve taken them about with me to the cliffs, the river and the beach. I admire and connect with this work, but unlike other poems, which can leave me feeling a bit morose (not meaning to look so directly at you, T.S. Eliot) these have the effect of making me ponder and grin for days.

Watch this space for an interview with Nigel Jenkins: poet, haiku practitioner and man about Swansea town…

O for a gun. £7.50. Planet Books, Aberystwyth. 2007.

Blue. £6.50. Planet Books, Aberystwyth. 2002.