The River is Flowing

Where Rivers Meet, my book of haiku poems and drawings, is now available on Amazon.

To find the book click this Amazon India link
or copy this ISBN number – 9392494122
into the Amazon of your country.

This book is special to me. About 15 years of published haiku and haibun and in addition, around 30 of my illustrations – pencil drawings and watercolours.

Its not the usual haiku book. I put it together differently. Many of the haiku have notes describing how I wrote them and I wrote about what is haiku, haibun and renku too. The haibun came mostly from my travels. Every trip has moments deep or humorous, such as the map confusion in Japan, the traffic light espressos of Rome and night on a volcano in Hawaii. Of course, the covid lockdown comes in too. A lot of the book was written during those difficult days.

Some asked me, what kind of book is this? Its not the familiar slim volume of verse – it has notes on how the haiku were written. Its not a sketchbook either. What is it? Well, I don’t know if there is a name for it. I started to put together a simple collection of my published haiku and haibun but writers love to write and there I was adding notes and drawings and the book turned into something else. My publisher was good enough not to ask me, what is this mess? He suggested a better order and somehow it came together. I don’t know how to describe it so I will let my friend and mentor, Susumu Takiguchi do it for me.

It is by no means an ordinary haiku anthology, nor is it a textbook, and not even a travelogue. What it is is an intriguing and personal notebook…

Susumu Takiguchi

The full text is here –

“There unfolds before our eyes a quiet but powerful drama of an Indian poet’s chance encounter with haiku and a totally different kind of journey it has ushered her into for the last 15 years. Tired of conventional poetry writing or meaningless vacations, Rohini Gupta ventures out on new trips without a map, planning or even destinations but led only by this newly-discovered form of poetry which is also a new way of looking at things. They take her to various unknown and unknowable roads and places, ranging from somewhere deep in the Himalayan mountains and valleys, through ruins of an ancient temple in Kumbhalgarh, to Japan, Ireland, USA and countries in Europe, and even to non-physical journeys in her expanded sensibility and in cyberspace.

She also ‘travels’ through our daily lives from feeding stray cats to the lockdowns of COVID-19. It is by no means an ordinary haiku anthology, nor is it a textbook, and not even a travelogue. What it is is an intriguing and personal notebook, recording what haiku has done to her sensibility as a poet, to her life as a city dweller and to her whole universe where haiku has given her a new eye to see thing differently. Driven by the incredible power of haiku, she voraciously delves into other areas of haiku literature as well such as renku and haibun.

Hers is an exciting story about getting a grip on and gaining mastery of all these areas. It is told in her concise language as a wordsmith and flows swiftly in short-sentence prose with pleasant rhythm, which is by itself a pleasure to read. At its heart lies her unblinking eyes to see truth, deep appreciation of beauty and a warm sense of humour. Her haiku wells up from somewhere deep. It is born, not contrived. The book provides self-satisfied haiku poets, especially seasoned ones, with refreshing stimulus, new insights and style, and those still to come with one of the right ways of starting haiku.”

Susumu Takiguchi, Editor in Chief, World Haiku Review.

The drawings are mostly graphite pencil sketches and one or two watercolours. They come from my pile of sketchbooks and from a span of years as I was struggling to draw correctly the twist of a fallen leaf, the curve of a petal, a woman in a coffeeshop or the intricacy of a bougainvilla. Here are a few of the pages.

Come and join me in this long journey into the always fascinating and surprising world.

Reaching Twenty One

Book no 21, of course. I reached 21 so long ago I barely remember it.

This 21st book is even more of a milestone because it is special. I dabble a little in art and it has been my dream to illustrate a book of my own poetry. You don’t need to be a professional artist to do that. Now it is no longer a dream. The book will be out soon with a print edition on Amazon.

I have been keeping a daily drawing practice for years, mostly pencil sketches. It relaxes me to untangle the complexity of a simple leaf or flower using a pencil. Out of the pile of sketchbooks, I selected around 30 pencil sketches and a few watercolours and sent them in to my publisher, Dibya Jyoti of Red River. He approved and created a beautiful design for my book, drawings to accompany the haiku poetry. I loved the cover on sight and most people I showed it too also liked it. Do you like it?

Where Rivers Meet

When covid brought a lockdown in 2020, we were completely unprepared. Life came to such a sudden halt that people were discussing their travel plans – the long commute from bedroom to dining table and back. The highlight of the day was standing at the window.

My long commute was in drawing. In pencil miles I have probably circumambulated the earth.

Mornings, of course, are for writing the next book, a schedule I rarely change. During the lockdown afternoons, after lunch had been cleared and the sun was still bright, I sat at the dining table with my pencils and sketchbook. I painted bright flowers to keep me going like the sketchy little watercolour poppies on the cover.

I do not remember how long it took me to get the bouganvilla below – possibly days.

The intricacies of a flower

Where Rivers Meet is a collection of my work over the last fifteen years or so. My published haiku, haibun travel tales, lockdown woes and the delights of nature. Looking back, its been a long journey and much labour has gone into the 21 books. Even more effort is going into book no 22 which is a novel. The mere size of a novel which can top one lakh (one hundred thousand) words can seem overwhelming. You have to take it one step at a time, one small section at a time, not in chronological order. Mine is going well, still a bit recalcitrant, but sliding slowly into shape.

So, with book no 21, Where Rivers Meet (the title is always taken from one of the haiku in the book) two journeys come together – 15 or so years of haiku poetry and many, many years of playful fiddling with art supplies. Its not the beginning and nowhere near the end. I know that as long as I write and draw for the sheer delight of doing it, my life will continue to be an adventure – what is around the next corner, where will that story or graphite line take me, into which new world?

I can’t wait to find out. See you there, in the always unexpected future which is never what you expect and that is the beauty of it. Though I know one thing which my immediate future holds – my book in my hands. Coming soon.

Twenty going on Twenty One

Not me, of course! My books.

A week ago I published my 20th ebook, and now my 21st book – this time with a publisher – is coming out very soon and this one is special.

Both books have taken all of this year and some of the last. Writing, editing and all the work of self publishing takes time. Book no 20 was Cafe Haiku’s 5th yearly anthology – about relationships. Coming out of two long and very difficult years and teetering at the edge of normality never quite sure when another wave will push us backwards – its perhaps never been so important to write about relationships and poets from all over the world took up the challenge.

sharing my solitude is available as an ebook on Amazon.

This was a book which should have come out in 2020 but that was the year we got slammed against the wall. It wasn’t much better in 2021. Editors were sick, delays piled up and it was 2022 before we could get going. Of all my Kindle ebooks, this one gave me the most trouble. The file just would not upload. I spent a week trying and hunting on the web for solutions. None worked. Finally I stripped the file and reformatted the whole thing. To my relief that worked, whichever little book virus was hiding in there got scrubbed out and the file uploaded. Surprisingly the book went live in just about 2 hours. It can take a day or more sometimes.

So, book no 20 was published. Book no 21 is on the way, the work completed, final layout approved. Waiting only for the print run.

I will come back with that story tomorrow.