"Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto."
Okay, so don't adjust your set, this is an English lesson, but we're looking today at
haiku, which is a Japanese form of poetry, but lots of English poems have been written
in the haiku form. So, first of all, I'd like to thank my students, Kuni and Negu, for their
help in training me to recite this haiku in Japanese. I hope it was okay.
So, this is a poem about a frog jumping into a pond and making a splash. So, it's a very
simple, straightforward scene, just a description of something in nature, and haiku is often
describing something in nature. And you might think: "Well, why...? How is haiku going to
help me learn English?" Okay? So, the... It's a very, very short kind of poem. You can see
it's three lines, not many words, so it's a manageable, short thing to read every now
and then, if you find some on the internet or whatever. And to find if there is a word
in there that you don't know, you can look it up and then you've learnt a new word. And
also, with haiku there is often a philosophical aspect. It's a description of something in
nature, but there's also something there for you to think about.
So, okay, let me just summarize. So, the haiku comes from Japan originally. It started in
the 9th century, so that's a long time ago. Basho, who wrote this poem, lived in the 17th
century, and he's very famous as a writer of haiku and as a poet generally. Okay. One
of the things about haiku is it's always... It's usually in three lines, and the number
of syllables is five, seven, five. Some poets, some haiku I've read in English don't always
follow that number of syllables, but basically they're usually three lines, very short, so
they're very quick and easy to read, and it doesn't take a lot of time to read a haiku
and think about it a little bit, and maybe learn a new word or two.
So, let's count the syllables, shall we? Just to be clear what syllables are. So: "Fu-ru
i-ke ya"-that's five-"ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu"-that's seven-"mi-zu no o-to", five. So that's the
number of syllables, because rhythm is very important in poetry. Okay.
So, now we get on to an English version, and because of copyright rules and all that sort
of thing, I decided I would write one of my own so that I can give myself permission to
use it in this lesson. Okay, so here it is, and I've drawn a tree because that is relevant
to the poem, so... And you might like to count the syllables just to check that I got it
right. So:
"What do I do now? I'm the last leaf on the tree
Waving in the breeze."
Okay? So "waving" is this sort of thing, the breeze is the wind. The breeze... A breeze
is a very small wind; not a very strong wind, just a gentle, little wind. Okay. So, here's
the tree with one leaf left on it. So, it's a scene from nature, if you've ever seen a
tree with just one leaf left, and you're looking and thinking: "Is that going to be blown off
soon or will it stay all winter?" But a part from being a scene from nature, you might
think: "Well, that's quite philosophical as well", because if you relate it to a human
person who is feeling alone like the last leaf on the tree... Maybe the last person
in their family. "What do I do now? I'm the last leaf on the tree, waving in the breeze."
So it has a kind of philosophical element as well if you start thinking about the deeper
meaning of it. Okay.
So, I'm not really a poet, so that just proves that you don't have to be a poet to write
a haiku. So I'm going to encourage you to try to write one of your own and just follow
the number of syllables, write one in English, and post it in the comments on the engVid
website. But before we finish this lesson, I just have one more haiku to show you written
by a friend of mine who has given her permission for us to use her poem, and it's actually
quite a funny one, so you can have humour in haiku as well, so let's have a look at
that.
Okay, so here is an example of a modern haiku written by my friend Sarah Lawson who has
given us her permission to use her poem. That's the copyright symbol there to show that it's
her copyright, her property. And it's quite a humorous poem, it's quite funny, but I probably
need to explain a little bit to explain why it's funny. So, anyway, we're in London here
filming and London is a big city with a lot of traffic, and there are often traffic jams,
very slow. The cars can't move very quickly, they get stuck. So, the first line: "A London
gridlock", and a gridlock is when the traffic just gets so stuck it can't move. If you have
a crossroads or something and the traffic, they're trying to get through the traffic
lights in both directions, and they're just stuck there, waiting and waiting for ages.
So, that's a gridlock.
"A London gridlock - But still the drivers went from
Tooting to Barking."
Okay. Now, if you don't know London, you may not be familiar with these two place names:
"Tooting", which is in the southwest of London; and "Barking", which is northeast. Okay, so
if you're literally going from Tooting to Barking, you're going from there to there,
right across London, through the middle and out the other side. So it's a long, long way.
So that's the literal meaning. Tooting is a place, Barking is a place. But in addition
to that, there's a double meaning here. "Tooting", there is a verb "to toot", "toot", and it's
the kind of word that imitates the sound. So when you're in a car and you sound the
horn, usually press the middle of the steering wheel or something and go: "Bur, bur, bur,
bur", that's tooting. So, the double meaning is there's a place called Tooting, but there's
also the sound and the action, the verb: "tooting", the drivers are tooting. Okay. Making a lot
of noise, trying to get through. And also Barking is the place, but "barking" is also...
It's an idiom for somebody who is going a bit crazy, because the full term is "barking
mad". Okay. So, if somebody is barking mad, you imagine them barking like a dog. Maybe
not literally, but they just say strange things and they do strange things. So, people just
use the word "barking": "He's barking. That man is barking", and it means barking mad,
you know, very strange person. So, that's the double meaning of this line. The place,
places on either side of London, but also they're tooting their horns; and the traffic
itself, because they can't get where they want to be very quickly, it is driving them
mad. They're going mad because they can't get through to their destination. So that's
the humour. And people say when you explain a joke it's not funny anymore, but I hope...
I hope you can see the humour in that. So, that's just to show how a haiku can be funny,
can be a joke.
So, again, I'd like to suggest that you give it a try and see if you can write a haiku,
either... Well, in your own native language, but also definitely in English. Try to write
one in English and post it on the engVid website in the comments section, and that would be
a lot of fun to see what you've all written and for you to all see each other's haikus.
So... Okay, so I hope that's been interesting. And there's a quiz, I'm sure there's going
to be a quiz on this, so please look for the quiz. And there may be a resource sheet about
poetry more generally. So that's all for now, so see you again soon.