Haiku by Dejan Pavlinović (Croatia)
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cicadas silent . . .
I become aware
of the world
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蝉静か世の存在に気付く我
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HAIKU to Akita’s “Haiku Beyond Earth”
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autumn walk
between two umbrellas
our hands get wet
傘二本秋の散歩に手が濡れる
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hoisted sails
the wind trapped
in the treetops
帆を揚げてマストに風を閉じ込める
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cicadas silent . . .
I become aware
of the world
蝉静か世の存在に気付く我
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from star to star
down the Milky Way
a little finger
小さな指星から星へ天の川
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sea pebble
only for a moment
in a little hand
小さな手海の小石を一瞬間
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flowing
from mother’s breast
nightly silence
夜の静寂母の胸から流れ出る
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unzipping
the world in two
a ship’s wake
船の跡世界を二分するがごと
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vanished
in their own greyness
autumn clouds
秋の雲灰色と化し消えにけり
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life lines . . .
my aging hands
down father’s ribs
老いた手で父の肋骨撫で下ろす私と父の生命線ぞ
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breaking waves . . .
the sun
reshaping itself
太陽の形を変える砕波かな
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Note: Short Japanese Poetry of 17 phonetic Units of 5, 7, 5 Pattern
Inspired by ten English haiku by Dejan Pavlinović, Hidenori Hiruta translated them literally into ten Japanese short poems first of all.
As a result, nine interpretative Japanese poems of 5, 7, 5 pattern are added to the English haiku as above. They might be haiku（俳句）or senryū（川柳).
And one of the English haiku is interpreted into Japanese tanka （短歌）poems of 5,7,5,7,7 pattern.
This is because English is different from Japanese.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
DEJAN PAVLINOVIĆ was born in 1968 in Pula, Croatia, but spent part of his childhood in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Today he is an English and German teacher, part-time tour guide and member of the indie band The Chweger from Pula.
He serves on the Iris haiku magazine editorial staff, and he is the founding editor of the Haiku HR Facebook page.
He runs the Pula Gymnasium Haiku club in his school and conducts haiku workshops for students and adults.
He judges haiku competitions for both children and adults.
He has been writing haiku since 2007. His work is featured in two Croatian haiku anthologies. His poems have been published in Croatia and abroad, awarded and commended on Croatian and international haiku competitions. His poems have been published in various national and international haiku magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies.
He publishes his haiku both in English and Croatian on his Smiling Cricket Haikublog.
In 2016 he published his first book, Mliječnom stazom / Down the Milky Way, a collection of haiku poetry written in both Croatian and English (foreword and afterword by Jane Reichhold and Djurdja Vukelic Rozic, and blurbs by George Swede and Chen-ou Liu).
In 2021 he published Nexus Haiku, a co-authored and co-created bilingual collection of haiku, senryu, haiku sequences and rengay, where all poems were composed equally and collaboratively during a period of three years by Michael Dudley, Tomislav Maretić and Dejan Pavlinović.
The Croatian Literary Society from Rijeka awarded Nexus Haikuthe “Borivoj Bukva” prize for the best haiku collection published in Croatia in 2021. Pavlinović publishes his second solo book Linije života / Life Lines / 生命線 in 2024, a collection of haiku poetry written in Croatian, English and Japanese (foreword by Nina Kovačić, and blurbs by Michael Dudley and Ikuyo Yoshimura).
His Latest Book:
His new book of haiku poetry LIFE LINES, is his third (second solo) collection of haiku poems. The collection is trilingual (Croatian, English, and Japanese), with contributions from IkuyoYoshimura (Japanese translations + blurb), Nina Kovačić (foreword) and Michael Dudley (blurb). The book is published by TONDAK in 2024.
Akita International Haiku Network 