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

That Day

By Reid Hepworth
Sidney, British Columbia, Canada

People sometimes mistake innocence with ignorance. It certainly isn’t that way with my brother.

Today, my brother got a bee in his bonnet and won’t let it rest. He keeps bringing it up. It doesn’t take long, what with his incessant harping and a healthy dose of reality checking, to motivate me to start listening. 

In no time, he has a bunch of us agreeing to give up our afterschool hours and weekends to help him. Armed with clipboards and a handmade petition, we knock on neighbourhood doors, and ask for signatures. Most of the adults we talk to just smile at us, or ask if our parents know what we’re doing, but some actually sign our petition. This motivates us to continue. 

A few weeks later, my brother drafts a letter to Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, puts it in an envelope with the signatures, seals it and gives it to my parents to mail.

Much later, he receives a letter back.

locking hands
we sit silently in the middle
of our street
a small group of children
wanting to change the world