Ty Hadman started studying Japanese culture and religion in 1964. He was interested in rock gardens, the tea ceremony, Japanese literature, woodblock prints, kite-flying, Zen, and just about anything Japanese. That same year he read some of the Peter Pauper Press Japanese haiku translations, but didn’t become interested in haiku until 1966 when he met a barber at an informal social gathering of artists in the Silverlake District in Los Angeles. This barber knew about 50 haiku by heart and his commentaries sparked lively discussions.
Ty was sent to Vietnam in 1968. He kept a personal diary which later inspired his first haiku. After the war he was admitted into a Hindu monastery in Canada, where he was a monk for two years. He then became a wanderer, hitchhiking in all four cardinal directions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, hopping freight trains, begging door-to-door, staying with friends or as a guest on communes, drifting from state to state, odd job to odd job, working as a migrant worker on farms and ranches, sometimes ending up in the city accepting day labor or odd jobs or factory work and then moving on again.
Ty finally settled down for four years in the San Francisco Bay area. Starting in 1987, he relocated to Mexico to do research on medicinal plants and the history of Hispanic haiku, and was employed as an English teacher. Ty Hadman relocated to Peru in 1993 where he presently lives with his wife and daughter in the tiny fishing village of Puerto Eten.
Ty’s haiku evoke his wanderings, particularly along the west coast, and therefore reflect a variety of American scenes.
(source: terebess)
As always, seven days to make music inspired by the poem above: more info at https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku
DEADLINE: 22nd March
Poem by Ty Hadman http://www.ahapoetry.com/PPthbio.htm
Picture by Khachik Simonian http://khachik.com