Dr. Grant Caldwell is a Senior Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Melbourne. His research interests are the writing of poetry and fiction, the psychology of composition, the teaching of creative writing, contemporary Australian poetry, the history and writing of haiku, and concrete poetry. Dr Caldwell has published 11 books of creative work (poetry, short fiction and novels) as well as a critical monograph. His latest books are the novel Love & derangement, 2014, Melbourne: Arcadia (Australian Scholarly Publishing); Reflections of a temporary self: New & selected poems, 2015, Melbourne: Collective Effort Press/Trojan Press; Intention and Unintention or the Hyperconscious in Contemporary Lyric Impulse, 2018 Melbourne: Arcadia (Australian Scholarly Publishing), a critical monograph.

Non-Japanese haiku today

Through the Bashō axes
Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the validity of the writing of haiku by non-Japanese poets (NJP), addressing the question of the extent to which it is possible or necessary for NJP to maintain the haiku spirit of its Japanese origins. Commentary from various Japanese scholars and poets, recent and past, as well as Western writers, will be examined as part of an argument positing that the essential nature of haiku, going back as far as Matsuo Bashō, has always been about change and development, and that the taking up of the form across the globe is a natural and valid part of this development.

Keywords: Haiku – non-Japanese haiku – haiku spirit

Visual Poetry—crisis and neglect in the 20th century and now

This paper is an investigation into the apparent fluctuating interest in and practice of visual poetry in Western culture through its history and form. The article will address in particular visual poetry (VP) in the 20th and early 21st centuries and the notion that the fluctuation coincides with the ‘crisis of sign’, reflecting a crisis of culture. While the crisis of sign may have been, and may continue to be, a fundamental driver of the 20th-century manifestation of VP, this article will argue that there are other possible factors contributing to its surges of interest, especially in the 20th century.