B&P Shadorma & Beyond – Full Circle – October 15, 2016

Hello Folks!

Today I’m going to talk to you about … the shadorma!  That’s right.  Back in March 29th 2014 our first prompt was presented here at Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie dedicated to the shadorma.

© g.s.koch

It was the first time I’d actually heard of the poem myself.  Our founder Yves introduced me to the form and asked me if I’d do a weekly prompt featuring the shadorma.

Where did the shadorma come from?  Supposedly it came from Spain as a European alternative to the Japanese haiku.  At lease in form it could seem similar to a haiku in the sense that it is brief …

a 6 line poem with the following syllable count: 3 -5 – 3 -3 -7 -5

I personally haven’t been able to find very much historically about this particular form to tell you the truth.  The farthest back that I’ve been able to go back and find a reference to the shadorma is in a copy of the 2005 edition of Forms of Poetry by Travis Lyon and copy-righted in 2003.  The reference is to Spanish poetry forms.

We have since added to the mystique of what a shadorma can be by adding a variation to the form … the Shadorma Summation – which I attributed to Jules at “Jules Longer Strands of Gems” and is a poem with a shadorma that rounds it up.  We’ve often used the shadorma as a chained or linked poem – or a series of shadorma – and many use the shadorma to end a piece of prose like the Japanese do with their haibun.

I don’t know who created the shadorma, some say it’s a prank the inventor is certainly anonymous to me I think we can say that thanks to Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie it has become a workable poem.

Recently Phylor – one of our contributors at MLMM wrote a lovly shadorma and commented that she usually only writes a one line shadorma instead of a multi stanza shadorma – it occurred to me, that is we think of the shadorma as being a Spanish variation of the haiku than this should be the logical way to write the poem trying to transmit our sensation in the six lines without having to elaborate into several stanzas.

So today what I’d like to ask you to do is create a shadorma following the rules of the classical haiku structure ( but of course with the shadorma structure!) :

• The syllable count: 5-7-5
  This is the most important rule and this is what makes haiku a haiku.
• The inspiration source:A haiku is inspired by a short moment. This short moment is as short as the sound of a pebble thrown in water. Say ‘one heart beat’ short. (You can say haiku is a ‘aha-erlebnis’).
• The season word  (kigo)
  To place the haiku in a specific season the classical Japanese poets used ‘kigo’ or season words. These are words that refer to a season e.g. tulips (Spring); sunbathing (Summer),  coloured leaves (Autumn) and snow (Winter)Through interchanging the both sentences the image of the haiku didn’t change.
• Cutting word (kireji) The so-called ‘cutting word’ or ‘kireji’ was mostly a ‘-‘ as I have used in the above given haiku and it means ‘here ends the line’ or ‘a break in the line’. The ‘-‘ may be counted as a syllable.
• Deeper Meaning  Every haiku (most haiku) have a deeper meaning. This deeper meaning is mostly a Zen-Buddhistic meaning, because haiku has originated from Zen-Buddhism, but it could also be a deeper meaning based on the philosophy of the haiku poet. The deeper meaning is mostly a spiritual one.

  Extracted from: Carpe Diem Haiku Kai – Lecture 1 written by our own Chèvrefeuille’s wonderful blog dedicated to haiku (I excluded the fact that the haiku’s lines are usually interchangeable for obvious reasons) .

And now for some inspiration … my kigo – autumn colours –

 

Once you’ve written your poem tag:  Shadorma and Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie, then put your info onto the Mr. Linky app (you can also ping us by linking this post)!

See you soon!  Ciao, Bastet.