In July 2016, Sayumi and I visited Morocco for the first time, and spent three weeks in this North African kingdom attending the 2nd Moroccan Haiku Seminar held in Oujda. The international event was held in homage to a representative Moroccan poet, Mohammed Bennis. The event is a major part of the international art forum of Assilah, managed by former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Benaïssa. We also attended a haiku meeting organized by the Center for Cross Cultural Learning in Rabat to commemorate our visit to Morocco. Under the direction of Sameh Derouich, who ardently serves as Director of the Gafaït Association, two of my haiku publications 30 Haiku Poems and Flying Pope were published during our stay in this attractive Arabic country by Agence de l ORIENTAL located in Oujda. These fantastic and honorable efforts were realized by the incredible cooperation between Arabic poets, especially those of Morocco, Japanese poets and European poets. In addition, we enjoyed traveling to seaside cities and resorts, extremely hot inland areas and an oasis named Gafaït to the south of Oujda next to Algeria. We experienced record high temperature of 49 degrees Celsius in Gafaït and in Marrakesh. Extremely hot even for Morocco. We were almost dead crying for water! Cats grown skinny in the extraordinary heat lay as if scattered by the wind in the medinas. We gazed out at cactus and graves, holding the same terrestrial powers in the desert, from a slow train. Grass in the desert radiated light itself. In spite of the overwhelming heat, they built a giant stone frog sculpture on the slope of Gafaït to express their respect and love for Basho s famous haiku. Haiku is the verbal and poetic core of our burning spirit. This burning spirit is watched over by the honeycomb shapes engraved on the dome of the Ben Youssef Madrasa in the north quarter of sunbaked Marrakesh. This honeycomb symbolizes the multiplying and everlasting energy of life on earth. And on the Atlantic seashore, the pure white walls of Assilah are like everything and nothing, as if an invitation to celestial beings. These thirty haiku record the blissful sensations of my trip to Morocco in nine languages. To this I owe a great deal to the many excellent translators. The thirty haiga added by Kuniharu Shimizu to my thirty haiku are not meant to explain the images in the haiku, but throw a different light on them, and from some unexpected angles.
?????Une Rose des voix?Rose of Voices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olyroGopHAE&index=13&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYTzEQciJD2KG3_PL_hQFPdO
???????? Ban'ya Natsuishi Haiku Reading 29 04 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbg6PCdRBNE&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYTzEQciJD2KG3_PL_hQFPdO&index=10
????? / The Theater of the Desert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEdETjONwPE&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYQ0JSBODVvCcQ95cQ9qERX7&index=26
????/Haiku Video ??????/Marching Beggar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp2VkORQYRU&index=25&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYQ0JSBODVvCcQ95cQ9qERX7
???? I'm Thirsty / ???? Ban'ya Natsuishi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_vYshkVrAw&index=25&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYQ0JSBODVvCcQ95cQ9qERX7
?????????5 haiku from "The Theater of the Desert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LTPt3RazlU&index=24&list=PL76x4NmZ0AYQ0JSBODVvCcQ95cQ9qERX7 |
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