Guest Talk on Digital H(ai)ku: An Introduction

SUMMARY OF THE OVERALL EVENT

The Department of Languages, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), The Hub of Analytics, Pune Lavasa Campus organized a Guest Talk on “Digital h(AI)ku: An Introduction” by Ms Rachayita Bhattacharyya on 8th April 2024 at 6 PM.  Ms Bhattacharyya is a PhD scholar of Literary Studies at the School of Liberal Arts (SoLA), IIT Jodhpur. Her research focuses on the gendered aspects of English haiku in the Indian context and its workings in the digital space. She is also interested in the role played by feminine subjectivity in the learning, composing, and performing of the short verse form. She sees poetry as a bridge between interactive community-building and individual autonomous expression. Her other interests include short visual narrative forms like Instagram reels. The session was conducted online on Google Meet platform and was open to all haiku enthusiasts. It started with a brief introduction of the resource person. The talk commenced by providing a brief context and definition of Electronic Literature. The speaker explained the emerging genre of “digital poetry” and outlined some of its defining features such as movement, interactivity and apparatus. The talk then delved into a brief history of the haiku form with its origins in Japanese culture. Japanese poets like Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, Yosa Buson, Masaoka Shiri and Kyoshi Takahama are considered to be pioneers of the form. The historical time period known as the Meiji Restoration saw increased contact with the West. As a result of these increased interactions, there was also an exchange of culture which resulted in the spread of haiku poetry to other parts of the world. The speaker drew the attention of the participants to Yone Noguchi, the first Japanese writer to publish poetry in the English language. His work is said to have inspired later beat poets as well as the Imagist School of poetry in England and America. In India, the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and the Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi experimented with the haiku form and created works of enduring beauty. In recent years, the haiku form has seen a revival in India with the work of famous poets like Satya Bhushan Verma and Kala Ramesh who is credited with the establishment of the Triveni Haikai India, a thriving community of haikai lovers and practitioners. In the second part of the talk, Ms Bhattacharyya focussed on the recent digital haiku experiments such as collaborative poetry writing, interactive haiku/art, generative and hypertext haiku. These experiments have resulted in the creation of projects and platforms such as HaikuJam App, Doom haikus, Leaning Haiku, Volvelle and Yohannes Artinyan’s Digital Haiku. Participants were invited to collaboratively create digital haiku using open access AI tools such as hAIku and Aiku. The speaker then deliberated on questions of agency and autonomy in generative poetry. This was followed by a brief Q&A session and the Vote of Thanks. The participants expressed their interest in being part of such events in the future that deal with the intersection of traditional poetry and its modern digital forms.

OUTCOMES OF THE EVENT

Outcome 1: Understand how digital tools can be used to create haiku Outcome 2: Appreciate emerging trends in haiku poetry in English Outcome 3: Explore opportunities for creative writing, research and collaboration

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT • FEEDBACK FROM IQAC

(This page must be at the end of the report, after all the attachments mentioned in the next page. The observations could be made by Department Level IQAC based on the feedback received from various attendees. Furthermore, various strategies could be suggested for better organisation of the upcoming events)

 

Date: 15-05-2024

                                                                                                                                                    

Dr Richa Srishti                                  Ms Elizabeth Varkey

Head/Coordinator                           Faculty Coordinator/Organiser                                   IQAC