feature in Haiku Highlights 1971

 
English and American Haiku Poets:  No. 4

Series compiled by Michael McClintock

Haiku Highlights magazine March - April 1971

 

(very grainy pic of me leaning against a brick bridge)

Christopher Faiers

Christopher Faiers, who often writes under his childhood diminutive, Cricket, was born in Canada in 1948, living there six years before emigrating to the USA and taking up residence with his family in Florida. Prior to leaving this country in 1969 for England, Faiers resided in Georgia.

For the past year, Cricket the poet has been living a communal life at the Eel Pie Island Hotel, situated - - it is rumored -- in the middle of the River Thames where, according to Joseph Conrad, greatness floats on the ebb into the mystery of an unknown earth. Undoubtedly, Christopher Faiers is listening intently to the lap-lap of the water, lest "the dreams of men, the need of commonwealths, the germs of empires" should escape him. Undoubtedly, too, he continues to  pursue the Way of Haiku with as much success, freshness and originality as was demonstrated in 1969 with his two collections, Cricket Formations and Beautiful Garden (private editions).

Considering that he temporarily resides in the heart of one of the great citadels of the Western World, bringing to it his American background, a poetry first born on Far Eastern shores, and his own youth, freshness and originality would seem almost assured.

Here, then, are five haiku from the pen of Cricket:

Halloween
a young boy
in a skeleton suit

The flower
of this old tree
a treehouse

Bay Wind blowing
Coconut Grove sailboats
tinkling rigging

After cold midnight
scraping burnt commune rice pot
on the lawn for birds

Palm fronds
tickling the purple night sky:
laughing

I'm sending this very rare copy of Haiku Highlights to the Haiku Canada Archives along with a copy of Micheal McClintock's 2008 tanka collection, Meals at Midnight (Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, Maryland)

                                                                   ~    ~    ~

I sent the following 'thank you' email to Michael McClintock a week ago. I'd hoped to receive a reply, but the address I sent to may be out of date or not in regular use. Maybe he'll read it here.

Hi Michael,

I don't know how, but I've survived to late middle age and look to turn 75 in 4 months. Last year I had an op to remove a tumour from my colon, so realizing, as always, the brevity of our lives, I've been speeding up the donation of poetry archival materials. Over the decades I've periodically sent packets to the Haiku Society of America archives in California, but currently I'm focusing on the Haiku Canada Archives at the Univ. of Victoria.

Emerging after over half a century was your very kind feature of my haiku in Haiku Highlights in 1971. The article came at a juncture in my life, when I was often literally starving on the hippy street scene of the UK in the late 1960s - early 1970s. Your piece gave me the confidence that I was capable of doing far more productive things with my life and calling as a poet, and I have lived a most interesting multi-faceted life, as I have read online that you have also enjoyed a very productive and satisfactory one following and broadening "The Way of Haiku  :  )-

a long echoing Thank You!

Chris (Faiers)/cricket