Sheila Windsor (UK) and Larry Kimmel (USA) are both well known poets on the international haiku and tanka scene. In this two voice improvisation they have loosely based their collaborative verses on a form first created by ai li, 22 June 1997, called Cherita, a form consisting of a six line verse of a 1 line stanza, a 2 line stanza, and a 3 line stanza. (see still, a journal of short verse; under linked forms (www.aili.co.uk/home.htm) The Cherita is a form highly influenced by traditional Japanese forms, but goes far beyond them in subject matter and is more amenable to minimalist story telling than its influences, though it can also be a fine vehicle for lyrical utterance.

This one hundred verse collaborative poem was written between the 15th of March to 15th of April 2005 and resumed between the 29th of November to the 22nd of December 2005. To make this work an improvisational art as possible, none of these verses were given more than a half-an-hour's consideration often far less, and the whole project done as quickly as was possible by email given the vagaries of time differences across the Atlantic and the proximity of either of the poets to a computer, at any particular moment.

For the reader it might be enough to think of this poem as a kind of "word jazz" with an underlying basis, a kind of chord progression, if you like, known only to the performers, a dialogue that ultimately arises from their respective inner-landscapes. Aside from any desire for an artistic construct, the poets hope this work might act as a bridge between the Japanese forms, especially the renku, from which it is distantly derived, and the western movement of symbiotic poetry.

Purchase Blue Smoke by Sheila Windsor and Larry Kimmel. 89 pp. 46 illus. from:

Winfred Press, 364 Wilson Hill Road, Colrain, MA 01340 USA. <winfred@crocker.com> for $17.00 ppd. or $20.00 ppd. outside the U.S.

OR

Sheila Windsor, 72 Victoria Avenue, Worcester WR5 1ED, England. <sheila_windsor@hotmail.com> (Paypal accepted) for £12 ppd.