The Haiku Recordings

About a year and a half ago, I assigned myself a project. I wanted to write a haiku a day for a year. Everyone knows about haiku from grade school, 3 lines with 5-7-5 syllables in each line respectively. Partly it was the discipline of writing something every day, partly it was to improve my writing. I wanted to write more expressively and more compactly.

I completed my year of writing haiku and have 365 haiku, plus a few more because I couldn't stop for a week or so. During the winter months, I was having a hard time and getting bored with writing so I revised my own rules and wrote poems that were 3-5-3 syllables. That was really tough. I also employed a writing support group to help me get the poems done. We met once a week and I had to show my week's worth of poems for critique.

A very good friend of mine, Kelley Baker (he's the Angryfilmmaker, check him out) who knows a thing or two about sound recording because he did the sound design for all of Gus Van Sant's movies, arranged to record the haiku with a few of his friends. Don Campbell and Al Lee (their book, As I live and breathe, will be out this fall, check them out, too) both are musicians and have recording equipment and know how. We met at Don's house and he set up a microphone. Kelley, his daughter Fiona, Al, Don, Don's wife Lee and I spent the evening reading and recording haiku. We cut little slips of paper with the poems on them, threw them into a hat and pulled them at random and read them.

I am still so excited about this recording session because I have never done anything like this before. Soon, Kelley and I will edit them, mix them, perhaps add sound effects or music. When we get done, I'll have a CD I can put on my site, SweetPersimmon.com.

So check out Kelley's site and check out Al and Don's site. Let them know you heard from them here.