Today, a letter – January in the Hot Springs

Kyo no tegami

fleeting glances
crinkled paper
tied in boxes
as if they never
moved

Project: Freeverse haiku-ish and paintings on variety of paper. Made in Tottori, Japan, 1993/4. Read publicly at my older brother’s wedding in Okazaki, Japan

I’d recently rambled Europe and feasted on van Gogh and Matisse and combining their bold lines and bright colours with the efficiency and conciseness of Japanese aesthetic – particularly seeing Shodo calligraphy and ink brush lines – these pieces emerged.

The poems are influenced by Japanese haiku as seen through *foreign eyes* experimenting with the form intentionally and otherwise – sudden but not structured.

Produced into a *very limited* series (maybe 30?) of chapbooks printed on hemp + cereal straw paper and sewn (top binding) with hemp thread in Guam in 1995/6 and mailed to friends.

I don’t have one of these bound copies, only the delicate originals in a folio