23 Comments
User's avatar
Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

The haiku are great, the pictures are great, and the intro is great. What more can I say? Another fine post, my friend. I particularly like this one. It goes so well with the picture. above it:

Collaborated,

salt licked and liberated,

no longer alone.

David Kirkby's avatar

Thank you my friend.

I felt it was time for a change in tone. I’ve been so serious.

Summer here is almost here!

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

Yes, throw off the shackles of heaviness and sing! It's a nice post, Dave. It made me feel good on a Sunday morning, though it's winter time here.

Dave Mead's avatar

Your ability to sum things up with a few lines of poetry is amazing. Great pictures too, thanks for sharing.

P.S. Reading this on a cold, damp, winters morning makes me ache to be there!

D

David Kirkby's avatar

Plenty sun here, mate. I could post you some....

D :)

Dave Mead's avatar

The way things are over here at the moment we’d just get a message, “We’re sorry your courier couldn’t deliver your sunshine today, we’ll try again tomorrow…….probably” 😂

Maya Sarin's avatar

Beautiful, David!

David Kirkby's avatar

Thank you, dear Maya.

Our Summer looms ahead, beautiful and sometimes fierce. When I lived in the desert, I did miss the ocean….🌊

D :)

Kate Bown's avatar

water bliss

Rebecca Cook's avatar

I love your ocean! I can't really imagine what it would be like to live a dessert like the ones you have down there. I can imagine living in the Gobi, maybe even the Sudan, but ya'll have such critters as would chill my soul and cause my death from fear!!

David Kirkby's avatar

Ha!

If I had to live in a dessert, it would be fruit salad.

D :)

Rebecca Cook's avatar

HAHAHAHAHAHA! I would live inside a bar of divinity!!

David Kirkby's avatar

Well! I had to look that one up. A Southern US nougat? Looks nice!...

I once hitch hiked through the French town of Montelimar which - at least back then (a fucking long time ago)- was advertising itself (slightly misleadingly) as the "birthplace of nougat."

There were shops everywhere advertising "Nougat à Vendre!" and "Dégustation de Nougat!"

This was irrelevant to me in a gastronomic sense because at age 18 I wasn't much into nougat and I was unable to afford it anyway. (I was living on bread and cheese and fruit picked from gardens, and I was sleeping in the fields and forests).

It did, however, strike me as wildly funny, (I admit I was a little crazy at the time), and ever after, whenever the subject of Nougat has come up (which is - fortunately - very seldom) I tend to bore people with the story.

As I just have.

Sigh.

But hey - tnx for re-stacking my post, dear Rebecca!!!

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Never ever bored by you stories. Divinty is unlike anything when it’s homemade. I haven’t had that in decades. Cracker Barrel is where to get it locally here. I suppose it is nougat…..but pure.

Mai Suga's avatar

Great haiku. I liked the introduction part of your nod to the Aboriginal people. You might already know, but there is a genre of writing called haibun, which combines prose(or essays) and haiku and/or art(pictures). This piece is a wonderful haibun.

David Kirkby's avatar

Dear Mai

I am a little embarrassed to admit my ignorance of this. "Haibun" is a form I have never explored. Although I was aware of the term I was not aware of its meaning, or perhaps I have read a definition in the past but let it slip away again, the way we forget our dreams...

I will certainly have read some Haibun works but I have not remembered them in any conscious sense; they will have influenced me unconsciously.

It is only since coming to Substack that I have started combining image with text and the opportunity to do that has had a profound impact on my work. Some of the texts I have written for Substack only make sense with the images I have included.

I do enjoy the Haiku form, so I am sure that more like this will follow. Sincere thanks, Mai, for the education.

I hope you are well, and still enjoying your own gorgeous art.

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Mai Suga's avatar

Dear Dave,

It was never meant to cause embarrassment. The great Haiku poets in Japan such as Basho and Buson never consciously set out to write “Haibun.” They did not have a term for it back then. So just like you, it was unconscious and a natural form of expression.

I do not mean to put your work in a certain genre. Or maybe I did, unintentionally. But I was just really excited to see this form of writing: a mixture of haiku, essay and art/pictures. It complemented each other well.

I think the combination of text and images has made your work accessible for me. I truly enjoy your pictures of Australia. As much as I love words, a single picture of the seaside explains so much its vastness, more than words can.

I am still happily painting. I hope to post this weekend.

Best wishes to you too

Mai:)

David Kirkby's avatar

Oh - friend Mai - I was truly happy to read about the Haibun form. In fact, quite fascinated.

In the very beautiful book of Haiku I bought myself, when I was just 18, there are works by Basho. I tend to write longer poetry but the Haiku form also attracts me as a counterbalance to that - the apparent simplicity, and the clarity, and the discipline of distillation required.

I am at my best, I think, when I let the form evolve to suit whatever subject has seized me. Yes - I suppose that is what Basho and Buson were doing.

I am delighted that my own work of text with image is meaningful for you.

Please do publish more of your art, and your thoughts about it!

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Carole Roseland's avatar

Looks wonderful!

Stephanie C. Bell's avatar

Loved this, and your nod to the people who inhabited Australia forever.

You are so right that the Earth's bounty unites us all, as it was meant to be. This was gorgeous: "I have just spent the day by the sea and I am reminded of how it removes what could otherwise be barriers between us."

David Kirkby's avatar

Thank you dear Stephanie!

Best Wishes - Dave :)

David MacGregor's avatar

In Ottawa I would go to the musical hall to hear the Hi Quins an Australian Aboriginal singing group with a world reputation

School of Blue's avatar

Oh, the draw of the southern sun!