Haiga Challenge 1 – Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta

Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta (Artwork)
Anju Kishore (Poem)

Anju’s Comments: To me, Sankara’s haiga feels like a song, perfectly balancing light and dark, object, text, and space. The moon is not there, but is there in the bowl. The beggar is not there, but is there in the stick. Want is in the darkness, and hope is in the light. There is a dream softly taking wing. And we see the mother and the child.

Haigh Challenge_Sankara Jayanth

The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative’s contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results

Haiga Challenge 1 – Marilyn Ashbaugh

Marilyn Ashbaugh (Artwork)
Anju Kishore (poem)

Editor’s Comments: This haiga spoke to me in that the discarded eggshell not only conjures the image of a half-moon but it also speaks to the uncertainty of day-to-day existence for those living in poverty. Eggs go good with pancakes but like the story of the beggar, this one is hollow and lacking in sustenance. The lines between the real and the unreal are blurred by the story. The child goes hungry, but Mother feeds its imagination.

Marilyn Ashbaugh - Discarded Eggshell

The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative’s contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results

Haiga Challenge 1 – Reid Hepworth

Reid Hepworth (Artwork)
Anju Kishore (Poem)

Anju’s Comments: Reid’s haiga makes me think of drooping eyelids, heavy with sleep. Or hunger. Or fatigue. Or all of the above. Whose eyes are they? The mother’s, the child’s or both? Or is this a view of the moon from those eyelids, with the mother’s voice blurring the line between reality and imagination? This minimalist abstract effortlessly sets the wheels in my head turning.

Haiga challenge_Reid Hepworth

The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative’s contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results

Cracked Soil

Anju Kishore
Bengaluru, India

cracked soil
this thirst for more
high-rises

Pancake Moon

By Anju Kishore
Bengaluru, India

pancake moon
stories the beggar feeds
her toddler

Published in THF Haiku Dialogue 3/23