whiptail: journal of the single-line poem
  • Home
  • MERCH!
  • Info
    • About
    • Contact
    • Statistics
    • Submissions
    • Team
  • Read the Journal
  • Additional Features
    • Whiptail News
    • Lizard Lounge >
      • Lizard Lounge - From the Issues
      • Lizard Lounge - Visiting Contributors
      • Lizard Lounge - Republished
    • Contributor Interviews
    • Supporters

contributor interviews

Meet Tim Gardiner

12/19/2022

0 Comments

 
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.
 
Firstly, thank you for the interview, Vandana. I was born in 1978 in the east coast town of Great Yarmouth (UK). By day, I’m a professional ecologist working for the government. By night I’m a haiku poet! I was first drawn into the world of short-form poetry over 10 years ago. I’ve been interested in poetry from my teenage college days when enthusiastic lecturers instilled a love of verse, particularly that of Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin. While I stepped away from poetry to pursue a career as a scientist researching the ecology and conservation of insects such as bumblebees, butterflies, grasshoppers, and glow-worms, gaining a doctorate, I returned to it in 2011 during a tumultuous period of my life. I found haiku an outlet for my bipolar emotions due to the sparseness of language and brevity of the form. It’s really a case of what you haven’t said, less is more. I also weave a love of nature into my haiku poetry; there is plenty of overlap between my role as an ecologist and poetry. In 2020, I combined my love of punk rock and haiku to begin editing the Turning Japanese haiku column in Suspect Device fanzine after a stint as co-editor of Haibun Today’s tanka prose section.    

 
Are you active on social media? How do you think social media affects the writing process?
 
I’m active on social media, especially Twitter where I was first introduced to haiku. Initially, I would tweet poems in the 5-7-5 format, before my writing developed into something resembling publishable quality. This led to haiku being published in 2013 before I joined the British Haiku Society (BHS) in 2014. I now only share published haiku on Twitter as there is a tendency for plagiarism of verses on the platform. Social media is a distraction, too. I would encourage new poets to try for publication rather than sharing on social media sites like I did. You learn more from a good editor, even with a rejection, than from social media feedback which tends to be uniquely positive from friends rather than constructively critical.   

 
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 only because there is an emotional trigger. Much writing serves no purpose and lacks authenticity because it is produced without any meaning or emotional depth. If you want to be a writer for the sake of it, then there’s a problem. As Bruce Lee said in Enter the Dragon, “Don’t think–FEEL.” After the initial thought and emotion which sparks the haiku into being, you can refine and edit your work. The late Stuart Quine once told me, “Haiku is the art of the instantaneous.” He’s not wrong.
 

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?
 
I attended a workshop at a BHS conference in the Peak District (UK) in 2014 where Stuart Quine ran a workshop that introduced one-line haiku. In that workshop, I learned that in many cases, the breaks dividing up haiku into three lines make little sense where one line is sufficient. We argued over the importance of the kireji and whether monoku become a mere sentence without it. I think we concluded that monoku can work well without a kireji or at the very least a subtle one. It was a stimulating induction to one-line haiku. I mostly write in that style now.  
 
​

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? 
 
If in doubt, take the line breaks out! Many haiku read perfectly well as a one-liner. It also forces the reader to interpret the kireji and it can be quite subtle in comparison to a three-liner with punctuation to demarcate the cut. I also find the rhythm of a one-line haiku easier to follow when the poem doesn’t work when chopped into three seemingly arbitrary lines. Monoku seldom have punctuation which helps with the flow of words. A kigo can also be important, although I find my monoku drift towards senryu or haiku/senryu hybrids without a clear seasonal reference.
 


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.
                                                                                                                                                                              
One of the first monoku I had published was written while at the 2014 BHS conference in the Peak District. I was walking along Baslow Edge with the steep drop of the rocks into forest when I wrote:


descending into mountain ash the path ends


The monoku was subsequently accepted for publication in Presence (#51) by Stuart Quine which was a lovely outcome from the conference. I think the poem is suited to one-line format as it flows gently into the path disappearing among the trees. In three-line format, it loses that sense of rhythm:


descending
into mountain ash
the path ends  


The issue of punctuation in monoku is a matter of debate. I’ve always loved Marlene Mountain’s:


so, who do you think fucked it up, caterpillars


Pissed Off Poems and Cross Words (1986)


Without the punctuation, I don’t think the monoku conveys the same level of irony and sarcasm. There are also different layers of meaning that the punctuation opens up.


And finally, the value of one-word haiku has been discussed for several decades. My best effort at a one-word haiku is simply:


nightjarring
​
Blithe Spirit #30.3, 2020


 
Do you have any tips for aspiring poets of one-line forms? 


The best advice I can give to new poets is to not be afraid of experimenting with one-line haiku. You can still retain the traditional elements of haiku such as kireji and kigo.  


Dr. Tim Gardiner (he/him) is an ecologist, editor, essayist, poet, and children’s author from Manningtree in Essex, UK. He has been widely published in poetry journals and anthologies. He is a former co-editor of the tanka prose section of Haibun Today and now edits a poetry column for the punk fanzine Suspect Device.
Picture
0 Comments

    contributor interviews
    ​​

    Would you like to get to know our contributors a little better? Vandana Parashar, our feature columnist, has reached out and asked some of them a few questions about themselves and their writing practice. Enjoy!

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022

    Categories

    All
    Alan Summers
    Alvin B. Cruz
    Brad Bennett
    Bruce H. Feingold
    Chuck Brickley
    Dan Schwerin
    Deborah A. Bennett
    Hemapriya Chellappan
    Jim Kacian
    Jo Balistreri
    John Hawkhead
    Joseph P. Wechselberger
    Julie Schwerin
    Lew Watts
    Marcie Wessels
    Margaret Walker
    Marianne Paul
    Michael Nickels-Wisdom
    Michele Root-Bernstein
    M. Shane Pruett
    Owen Bullock
    Pippa Phillips
    Polona Oblak
    Pravat Kumar Padhy
    Richa Sharma
    Roland Packer
    Ryland Shengzhi Li
    Shloka Shankar
    Tim Gardiner

    RSS Feed

facebook

​
whiptail 
 runs on coffee and passion. We don't charge submission fees because we don't believe in limiting whose voices get heard. If you like what we do, please consider a small donation to help with website costs.
.

Instagram

Listed at Duotrope
LINKTREE

Twitter

Picture
Our gracious thanks to Raghav Prashant Sundar for his work producing our numerous lizard graphics. Designs by Kat Lehmann & Robin Smith.


​
​
​ISSN 2769-5263
© Copyright 2021 - 2023 whiptail journal
Individual works are copyrighted by their respective authors.
​All Rights Reserved
  • Home
  • MERCH!
  • Info
    • About
    • Contact
    • Statistics
    • Submissions
    • Team
  • Read the Journal
  • Additional Features
    • Whiptail News
    • Lizard Lounge >
      • Lizard Lounge - From the Issues
      • Lizard Lounge - Visiting Contributors
      • Lizard Lounge - Republished
    • Contributor Interviews
    • Supporters