sweet grapes
the conversation passes
between friends

What began as a workshop/study group developed into some of my closest friendships. From 2000 to 2019 members of the Route 9 Haiku Group vacationed together in Maine. These trips represented an annual highlight for us and a high point of those trips involved writing renku.

Writing renku over two decades with some of the same partners produced a strong sense of each participant’s style. I came to feel that Hilary and I were almost twins in this regard. We both came to a session with a page or more of potential hokku. And when it was our turn to offer a later verse, we typically had multiple candidates before other participants could get out of their seats. We also both had a strong sense of the work as a whole and what it might need at various stages of development.

I remember the moment when Hilary offered the above verse. It was during a renku session at Paul MacNeil’s Onawa Lake camp. I noticed, as Hilary did, that the bowl of grapes that were being passed around offered a resonance between their own qualities and the qualities of the group. I was still working on finding the words to express this when Hilary was ready to recite:

sweet grapes
the conversation passes
between friends
—Hilary Tann

I miss my renku twin.

John Stevenson
June 24, 2023