High Town haikus collected in book
Haiku book cover
LUTON may not be the first place you look to to get your creative juices flowing but for the past five years it has been the inspiration behind hundreds of haikus.
Andrew Kingston and his collective from Clod Magazine write five haikus a week, all based on Luton, which they publish on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
The haikus from 2009 and 2010 are about to be published in a new book called Luton Haiku from Clod Books and Magazine.
Mr Kingston said: “I don’t know how it started really.We’ve been doing music and the magazine since 1987 and the haikus just kind of developed along with that and we started writing them on My Space.
“They can be about anything to do with Luton. We write them about local news stories like the elections and Margaret Moran, and odd things we notice while walking around town.”
A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry which consists of only 17 syllables across three lines with a pattern of 5, 7, 5.
Mr Kingston said: “We naturally have fun with it and the haikus tend to be humorous. Haiku is a very serious philosophical and historical form of poetry, but ours are not as serious as that.
“The Japanese poets must be horrified by what we are doing, but it’s all a bit tongue in cheek.”
Mr Kingston and the rest of his unidentified poetry penning pals, who are based in High Town, prefer to maintain an air of mystique but will be at T in the Car Park tomorrow (August 12) and Luton Aid on Friday, August 19.
The Luton Haiku is available to pre-order from www.lutonhaiku.webeden.co.uk.The latest haikus can be viewed online at www.twitter.com/lutonhaiku or www.facebook.com/hightownhaiku.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Luton
Thursday 23 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: West
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.