Meet Owen Bullock

A very warm welcome from the whiptail team. Tell us a little about yourself – your family, your hobbies, your dreams, or anything else you want the readers to know about you, apart from being a haiku poet.
 
I’m originally from Cornwall. I lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for 25 years before migrating to Australia to do a Ph.D. in 2014. I stayed on as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Canberra (UC). I’ve been writing poetry since I was 14, so that’s 42 years. I have three grown-up children of whom I’m deeply proud. My partner is a ceramicist, with an abiding interest in permaculture. My hobbies are music and chess, and I still juggle a little bit (I was a juggler in a previous life – I feel like I’ve had many lives). None of these things are really who I am, though, that’s something which can’t be expressed.
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What is something that people don’t know about your poetry or poetry practice, process, or inspiration that you’d like to share?
 
I write in many genres, and I think that readers of some aren’t aware of my work in the others. I’m both a formalist and an anti-formalist. I write haiku, tanka, haibun, and renga. I also publish longer, experimental works. I publish prose poetry and am part of the Prose Poetry Project based at UC. I write sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, and triolets. I try to invent my own forms. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from haibun as a model for other hybrids. In my “Fusion poems” series, I abandon the inclination to keep these forms separate and blend linear experiments, prose poetry, haiku, and tanka, and found material. The idea here is to try to create a form of poetry that reflects the age we live in, and the way information comes to us from diverse sources. I love different voices and try to give as many of them air time as possible. I’ve also published fiction, and I write academic articles, largely about poetic techniques and processes and the therapeutic value of writing.
 

What made you decide to try out haiku and/or tanka in one line versus their more popular enjambed formats? How does it feel different to you?
 
The single line has differing semiotic potentials to the three-line haiku. Sometimes the line becomes energised in what Jim Kacian calls “speed rush.” Sometimes ideas are forced together creating new meanings, or a pleasing sense of ambiguity, assisted by the lack of caesura and/or punctuation.
 
The first haiku I remember writing in a single line is this piece:

 
the empty seat where I used to sit
 
RawNervZ, IX:1, 2003

 
It could have been laid out in three lines:
 
the empty seat
where I
used to sit

 
but the break at line two would draw too much attention to the self, which is being played down in the haiku.

 
My first published one-liner was:
 
my shadow   could be   anyone
 
Presence 18, 2002

 
It started life in three lines:
 
my shadow
could be
anyone

 
Using three lines was very much a default at this point, but I realised that the idea that our shadows are similar would be rendered more effectively in a single line. It’s been republished a few times, and I now use the following version, with only one internal caesura:

 
my shadow   could be anyone
 

Many poets still struggle with the dilemma of whether a particular poem will work better as a one-line poem than the enjambed form and vice-versa. What is the deciding factor in your practice? 
 

Originally this haiku of mine was in four lines:
 
the arc
of the rugby ball
spinning end to end
in the late arvo sky
 

A slight edit helped suggest that the ball could be spinning the sky:
 
the arc
of the rugby ball
spinning end to end
the late arvo sky
 


I wondered if this idea would be stronger or weaker in a single-line version:
 
arc of the rugby ball spinning end to end the late arvo sky

 

I decided one could still read it in the same way without the second article:
 

arc of the rugby ball spinning end to end late arvo sky
 
Echidna Tracks: Australian Haiku 10
 

I liked the energy of the single line here. The deciding factor is what’s best for the poem.
 

It would be a great help to our readers if you could walk us through your writing process from conception to the eventual birth of a one-line poem. You are most welcome to take a one-line poem or two of yours to discuss how it came to be and/or process.
 

I’ve given an example of process above. I think the key is to stay flexible. In the editing phase, I try most of my three-line haiku in one line, and vice versa, just to see what the differences are and whether the single line has advantages. I try haiku in two lines, with the assumption that, since they are often composed of two contrasting images, this might be appropriate (though frequently it isn’t). I’d recommend switching things around to see where the strengths lie.
 
It’s important, too, to be on the look-out for inspiring examples, where the form of the poem enacts the content, as in these two brilliant one-liners:
 


marshreedsbittermarshreeds
 
Seren Fargo, Wales Haiku Journal, Autumn 2020
 

 
after the bells the bells the bells sound like

 
Brendon Kent, Where silence becomes song: International Haiku Conference Anthology, British Haiku Society, 2019
 

I’d also recommend being open to learning from any genre of writing. I’ve gained a lot from studying screenwriting and narrative modes. Each genre can show you something useful that you can take to the others, even if you don’t fall in love with it. Overall, haiku is my favourite form because it contains so much.  

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Owen Bullock (he/him) has published five collections of haiku, Summer Haiku (2019), River’s Edge (2016), Urban Haiku (2015), Breakfast with Epiphanies (2012), Wild Camomile (2009); a bilingual collection of tanka, Uma rocha enorme que anda à roda (‘A big rock that turns around’), translated into Portuguese by Francisco Carvalho (Temas Originais, 2021); three books of poetry, Work & Play (2017), Semi (2017), Sometimes the Sky Isn’t Big Enough (2010); the novella, A Cornish Story (2010). A new collection of poetry, Pancakes for Neptune, is forthcoming (Recent Work Press, 2023). He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Canberra.
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poetry-in-process
@OwenTrail