QUICKLY: Haiku master Duncan Gardiner
Today, I read in the Herts Advertiser about a poet who lives in St. Albans, not the one close to Charleston, W.Va, but another St. Albans, one in the United Kingdom.
Duncan Gardiner has Parkinson’s Disease. About 10 years back, he retired from the Building Research Station in Garston — that’s a place, I take it, of scientific measurements and the refinement of things like acoustic architecture. Since then, he has mastered the haiku form.
The quick, exact, compressed nature of haiku, its grounding, appeals to Gardiner. New Hope International Review says Duncan has a knack for “making his poems from special feelings that come from the heart in the middle of a normal day.” Example — his haiku on leaves, which reflects the transience of life:
Apple leaves — cupping hands
Catching and holding the last
Of the summer sun
