heid haiku

A chance exchange on twitter last week (with a poet who shares my name) got me thinking about possible associations between hats and poetry – between heids and haiku. Couldn’t a heid be something like a haiku? Both are small things, of a certain structure. Both are created by human hands and brains, and both involve a set of determinants. Heids must fit . . . a heid. A haiku must fit its seventeen syllables. For both, restriction or limitation actually belies the infinite flexibility and creativity of the form. So  I thought I’d have a go at writing fifteen haiku, one for each heid in the collection. Now, I don’t have particularly strong views about what is and is not a haiku (just as I don’t think much about what is and is not a hat). I did not consider juxtaposition or the way the syllables are “supposed” to fall across each line. I just sat down and spent a happy few hours, composing poems of three lines and seventeen syllables, to celebrate each fabulous hat in this collection. The contributing designers produced some brilliant work for this book, and writing a wee poem about their heids is my way of saying thanks, to them. Writing haiku made me think very hard and very carefully about, as it were, the essence of each hat. Finally, I had fun. All of these things – celebration, having fun, using one medium to reflect upon another – are key constituents of what I think of as the creative process (and might give you a clue to a theme to be explored in our forthcoming club).

So here are the heids . . . and their haiku.

Breiwick
Shetland boasts many Breiwicks
wide, bright bays
this one is Ella’s

Let’s Stripe
a fence, a road: divisions or connections
thoughts or their absence
flukes

Caithness
a place of not-being
grants space for reflection
ex-hat-triate

Peerie Flooers
I wear many hats
this one speaks of spring, brings
cheer. I often choose it

Tarradale
the answer to many questions
about dark and light
and doubleness

Cottage Garden
from planted seeds there bloomed
thoughts of a hat
in which to clothe memory

Roamin’
this tam’s for time travel
in gramophone tones find
the heart centred

Medieval Arches
twinkling brush-stroke stars
make bare stone blue yonder
each age paints out the last

Sambucus
purple berries, remedy
this hat might be
good for what ails you

Cadans
a zigzag path
to walk or knit
formed by bending a stripe at two points

Every Flavour
restrained style
meets technical precision
now each shade can sing

Chezzetcook Inlet
the same geese gather
in Nova Scotia
as fly over old Scotland

Otter Ferry
it began with a button
grew from there
twice as long is long enough

Featherheid
Honey, Bonbon, Pretzel
mucky Khaki Campbells
A tribute

Tettegouche
as perfectly balanced
as Virginia
standing on her head

If you are keen to get knitting, we now have yarn packs for each heid available in the KDD shop.
All preordered books are ready to ship and we will update you as soon as we have news about the new print run.