the stylist
rinses away
the sound of her voice
First Place, 2009 Gerald Brady Senryu Award
Barry George
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
髮型師
沖走了
她的聲音
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
髮型师
冲走了
她的声音
Bio Sketch
Barry George’s haiku have been widely published in journals and anthologies, and in Chinese, Japanese, German, Romanian, Croatian, and French translations. A winner of competitions including First Prize in the Gerald Brady Senryu Contest, he is the author of Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Below is the judge's comment, which can be accessed at http://www.hsa-haiku.org/bradyawards/brady-judges2009.htm
ReplyDeleteThe first place senryu is not just about noise but perhaps about information overload so indicative of our twenty-first century world. On the face of it we can relate to having an annoyingly chatty hair dresser or barber drowned out by the rush of the tap. In the big picture we yearn for those increasingly rare occasions when our modern day lives are just simply unplugged.
"On the face of it we can relate to having an annoyingly chatty hair dresser or barber drowned out by the rush of the tap. In the big picture we yearn for those increasingly rare occasions when our modern day lives are just simply unplugged."
ReplyDeleteCameron French, a writer for Yahoo! Finance admits that while this scenario is ideal for extroverts, there is a lot of people who are terrified of forced chit-chat, making the hair appointment a stressful event. Also, it's not just the person in the chair who is suffering from the unwanted chatting – the stylist is forced to push conversation throughout their shift.
-- "Would you visit a no-talk hair salon?"
I read L3 mainly as an indication that under the stylist's professional facade lies a loneliness that consumes her.
In the opening chapters of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s 2013 award-winning novel, "Americanah, " the wonderful and vivid descriptions of a hair-braiding salon in Trenton New Jersey might make you (the attentive reader) rethink this heartfelt haiku.