The Monthly interviews short form poet, writer and musician, Sean O’Connor – Part 2 – The Japanese road to short form poetry

How do you end up gravitating towards short form poetry?

In relation to Japanese literary forms, I was on a holiday in Devon, it was in the early 80’s, and I went into a second hand bookshop and bought a huge book, an almanac, like a thesaurus of poetry, for about £5. The first half was all about different styles of poetry; forms and so on, villanelles and sestinas, etc. The last two pages were all about Haiku and I decided to follow that.

Haiku tied in to the fact that I had been reading a lot about Eastern Philosophy for several years. Incidentally, from the age of 8 I had joined a judo club, a Japanese martial art. Later on I went on to do Aikido, so I had a connection to Japanese culture. I was particularly interested in Zen Buddhism. I ended up training with a French monk, and at the same time, I was starting to unravel what I could about Haiku.

Eventually, I would end up living in Japan for 5 years, in rural Japan, and it was there I started working with some great Japanese writers, people like Nobuyuki Yuasa, who was the first person who translated “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”, a very important book regarding Japanese short form poetry, published in 1968.

You were very committed to learning about Japanese culture, particularly short form poetry?

Those five years really cemented those forms, and it wasn’t just Haiku, it expanded into Waka, Tanka and Haibun. I think because of the importance of rhythm in those forms, they suited me as a person who was very strong on rhythm being a musician as well as writer.

All of those things combined, allowed me to develop my writing in short form poetry. I did, unconsciously, what the Japanese would recommend, in terms of that type of writing. Shu Ha Ri in Japanese, is the concept of the long period of practise, of learning craft and technique usually under the guidance of someone who is quite masterful at it or well-established.

I spent years practising, writing literally thousands of them (Haiku) before I submitted anything anywhere or showed anyone anything. I spent decades on it, quite literally decades. That starts in 1984 in that bookshop in Devon, so nearly 40 years now.