This haibun I wrote in recent months appeared in the November issue of the online journal ‘Failed Haiku’. I don’t often write about life during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, but this particular day came to mind when I was trying to come up with an autobiographical subject.
Edited by Mike Rehling, Failed Haiku is a journal dedicated to the short poetry form senryu. This particular issue was guest-edited by renowned poet Roberta Beary and featured her selection of submitted haibun—prose combined with haiku, senryu or tanka. I was very honoured that Roberta decided to include this one of mine. (Some poetic licence has been used, but the events of the day are very real. I was fortunate that I was never caught bunking school, and it occurred a lot less than the haibun suggests!)
It is an awesome haibun, and the photographs hint at what it might have been like too.
Alan Summers
Call of the Page
Thank you, Alan.
Yes those were the images that confronted us when we went down to the square next day…the blackened shell of the old hotel.