Sunday, January 2, 2022

Butterfly Dream: Self Examination Haiku by Winona Baker

English Original

breast self examination
a moth batters
the screened window

Those Women Writing Haiku, 1986

Winona Baker 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

乳房自我檢查
一隻飛蛾不停地
撞擊紗窗

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

乳房自我检查
一只飞蛾不停地
撞击纱窗


Bio Sketch

Winona Baker was born in March 18, 1924 and moved to British Columbia, Canada in 1930. Living in Nanaimo, she raised four children with her husban. A haiku specialist, she received the top global prize in the 1989 World Haiku Contest in honour of Matsuo Basho’s 300th anniversary. She published Moss-Hung Trees. The title came from her prize-winning haiku. Her work had been translated into Japanese, French, Greek, Croatian, Romanian, and Yugoslavian.  She passed away in Nanaimo on October 23, 2020.

1 comment:

  1. L1 sets the theme while the image of a moth battering against the window in Ls 2&3 could be read as an implicit simile for the narrator's state of mood/mind.

    And it might be interesting to do a comparative reading of the following haiku:

    pregnant again ...
    the fluttering of moths
    against the window

    White Heron, 2011

    Janice Bostok

    ReplyDelete