TIME'S BARTER

At their best these haiku - full of rain land clouds plums and (like the Japanese) cherries domestic life city vistas and uncliched vignettes of the abundant nature for which his land is renowned - richly exemplify the three defining features which Tony Conran has isolated as the essence of haiku: 'loneliness tenderness and slenderness'. Then there are the characteristic attributes of brevity concision simplicity presence sensory directness and present-tense immediacy. There's a quality of profound attention often to minutiae and a sharpness of observation mediated by down-to-earth unembellished language. The quality of his haiku writing has already been recognized in Wales where the leading cultural magazine Planet: the Welsh Internationalist has recently published in its pages a selection of his haiku. One looks forward now to seeing what ripples they might make on the still youthful haiku scene of India.