Hi-Q: an end / a beginning
Today (April 2, 2022) is the 3 year anniversary of Hi-Q as a daily project. Of this specific instance of my haiku obsession, er, journey.
Today is also the end of this particular incarnation of that obsession (for now?). After somewhere around 1,100 consuctive days of Hi-Q (if my math is correct).
I started entertaining the thought the other day, and then realized that day happened to be the 3 year anniversary of the Instagram post that kicked this whole thing off.
Hi-Q will live on, but in new formats and experiments. My immediate, post-daily poem plans are to organize the archives and create some book-like objects to house them. It’s something I’ve been meaning and wanting to do for a while, so now is the time. Plus, I might learn some things that come in handy for future Hi-Q experiments.
What are these new experiments and formats I keep hinting at? Haven’t the foggiest! But I think the broadstroke ideas fall into three general categories:
- Collections (zines, books, pamphlets, cycles, vignettes, etc.).
- Physical artifacts (typewriter art pieces, textile, paint, landscape works, who knows)
- Digitally-native artifacts (podcast, audio poems, animated pieces, hyperlink works, pieces that can only exist because of technology)
I also just want to read, think, and write more about haiku, not just make haiku. I think I hit a point where the daily aspect of this current version became more primary than the haiku portion. I need to disrupt that habitual rhythm in order to explore (I already feel more excited about and creative with haiku again since making this decision).
Over the past few years of doing this I’ve collected a group of questions that will likely lead my future experiments. They are:
- What is a modern haiku? What makes a haiku modern?
- What is a punk haiku?
- What would be a future haiku? What pushes the form/genre forward?
- What would a mixed media haiku look/feel/sound/smell/taste like?
- What would make a haiku web-native?
- How does haiku, as an art form, remain timeless while also being timely? (Doesn’t it seem like a form created for the current age?)
- The most existential: what is haiku?
- And, probably the biggest one: am I good enough to get published?
All that to say, things around here will be different, but they will still be haiku.
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