For the past two years, I’ve collaborated with haiku friends on what I call the Midwinter Day Renku. I created this renku variation in response to one of my all-time favorite works of literature, Bernadette Mayer’s epic poem Midwinter Day. 

The story behind Midwinter Day is that Mayer composed the entire thing on Friday, December 22nd, 1978, the date of the winter solstice. The title refers to the fact that many older, lunar-based calendars consider the solstice the midpoint of the season rather than the beginning, which is the designation of the astronomical calendar we use today. 

Midwinter Day is a 100-ish page poem about the day in the life of a young family (Mayer, her husband, and their two children) living in Lenox, Massachusetts. Largely free verse, this poem is highly allusive, contains numerous lists, and frequently incorporates poetic devices such as rhyme. In Midwinter Day, poetry is not separate from parenthood and grocery shopping; it’s intertwined. There is no distinction between art and the rest of life; they are one and the same. 

Since first reading this poem in 2015, I wanted to create some sort of homage to it. But my attempts to truly imitate Bernadette Mayer fell flat, and didn’t feel true to the way I like to approach my own poetry. Once I went deeper into studying haiku and learned about the various forms of linked verse, I began experimenting with a linked form that I wrote solo throughout the day. But while you can certainly write a renku or other linked form alone, I found I didn’t really enjoy that. I wanted to collaborate. Midwinter Day might have been written by a sole author, and yet she is anything but alone. 

After a couple of years of noodling around ideas, I finally settled on a shorter version of the renku. I wrote the first one with my friend Claire, a poetry friend from my Austin days. Last year, I tried with a larger group: six people in three time zones emailing back and forth. Tomorrow, I will write the third-ever Midwinter Day renku with my friend Dan, who lives in another country. It’s the first international Midwinter Day renku! I’ve kept it just the two of us because juggling such disparate time zones is going to be a bit of a challenge, and I decided a smaller size would help navigate that. 

This approach to the form is still a work in progress. Not only do I keep learning more about renku, but I keep wanting to adjust the specifics of the structure itself. I’m already thinking of adjustments I want to make for next year, but I didn’t want to make more changes at the last minute and throw off this year’s game. The parameters for 2024 and 2025 will be different, but that’s just fine. I’m excited to see how this form evolves over the next few years, and look forward to the eventual feeling that I’ve gotten it just right. 

Poem Structure

A traditional kasen renku has 36 verses, though shorter variations exist as well. My first renku was an 18-line version because my in-person group didn’t have enough time to do a full 36. 

The Midwinter Day Renku has only 24 verses. Since the lore behind Midwinter Day is that it was written in the span of a single day, the 24 verses stand for each hour of the day in which it is written. 

The writing process does not have to span 24 hours (unless you have a lot of energy and ambition), and each verse does not literally have to correspond to a specific hour, either. Just as Midwinter Day is not a literal accounting of hour by hour, this poem should not be a ponderous notation that happened in each block of time. Rather, the decision to use 24 verses is a nod to the time span of the original Midwinter Day epic poem.

The Season

A traditional renku incorporates all four seasons, with certain verses assigned a seasonal designation. The Midwinter Day Renku, however, focuses on one season: winter. It’s written on a winter day and influenced by a different winter poem, so invoking additional seasons didn’t feel right. I wanted the whole poem to be fully grounded in the time of year.

That being said, 2024 is only the third year I’ve tried out this form, and I’m still refining the details. I’m not opposed to potentially putting other seasons in if I get to a point where it feels like the correct choice.

Topics

Most renku verses have a designated topic, and that topic is usually a specific season. The only other topic we occasionally see is love. 

For the first two years, I tried this form, I did not use any topics. Since I’m not changing the season, I just kept every verse open. However, the original Midwinter Day poem is rife with topics that could be fun to use. Not only does the poem detail the events of a young family throughout the day, but it’s rife with cultural and historical allusions, as well as details of the current events at the time it was written.

This year, I decided to try assigning one topic for each verse. While in a renku some verses have no topic, Midwinter Day is so full of potential topics that I decided to try 24 topics. Again, this is only the third year of working with this form, so that might change in 2025. Right now I’m having fun and seeing what happens with each year’s iteration. 

Verse Topics (2024 Edition)

Verse 1: Dreams

Verse 2: People you know

Verse 3: Love

Verse 4: Children

Verse 5: Cultural allusion

Verse 6: Memory

Verse 7: Food

Verse 8: Current events

Verse 9: A discovery

Verse 10: Art

Verse 11: Incorporate rhyme

Verse 12: A book title

Verse 13: A store of some kind

Verse 14: Walking

Verse 15: Friendship

Verse 16: Cooking a meal

Verse 17: Religion

Verse 18: Music

Verse 19: Philosophy

Verse 20: Reference another poet

Verse 21: A list

Verse 22: Science

Verse 23: Love

Verse 24: The sun / light  

Writing Strategies

While renku were traditionally written in-person at gatherings specifically designed for writing this type of poetry, long-distance renku have been written for a long time. Poets have written them slowly via postal mail, and in the internet era, people compose them via email or messaging apps.

I think that the Midwinter Day renku is well-suited to writing at a distance. The past two years, I’ve composed via email. This year, I’ll be composing via direct message in the Station of the Metro Haiku Discord. Just as the original Midwinter Day was written throughout the day, in between childcare and errands and the other facets of life, writing long-distance via email or another system allows you to go about your various activities and allow those to drift into the poem. If a verse comes in while you’re in the middle of wrapping gifts or feeding your kids, you can finish what you’re doing before writing the next verse. The things you do throughout your day have the potential to enrich the entire writing process.

If you want to write in person and you live with people or have friends/family visiting for the holidays, consider leaving a sheet of paper out on a table and come back to it throughout the day. Let the rhythms of your life guide the writing. Let the renku composition take place in those brief moments of pause throughout the day. (But if your life has a tendency to get hectic, maybe set yourself a few phone reminders to go work on it.)

Of course, if you want to sit down and write with another person in one session, that’s totally fine as well. And you can certainly compose by yourself, either throughout the day or in one shot. My goal in devising this form was to honor the Winter Solstice through one of my favorite poetic forms. 

Beyond that, the only thing I would recommend is that you create an outline of the verse, topic, and the person who will be writing it. I think that’s especially important when you’re writing long-distance. Although this form is shorter than a standard renku, it’s still possible to get confused or lose your place. Having an outline and plan will help. 

2022 Poem: The Hidden Sun

I posted the first-ever Midwinter Day Renku as a Haiku Girl Summer bonus post. If you would like to read what I first wrote with my friend Claire, you can view it here: https://haikugirlsummer.substack.com/p/midwinter-interlude-the-hidden-sun

Not only was this the first attempt at the form, but I also knew less about renku than I do now. So I hope that those of you who know the form well can overlook the stylistic issues of this novice attempt.

2023 Poem: Wassailing Within

Wassailing Within

A Midwinter Day Renku written by Allyson Whipple (St. Louis, MO), Peter H. Schmidt (Lexington, MA), Eavonka Ettinger (Long Beach, CA), and Claire Vogel Camargo (Austin, TX)

Thursday, December 21^st, 2023

iceless river
one prolonged blast
of a salvage barge                           (AW)

sideways sleet
maple javelins spear the earth         (PHS)

the yearly
arrival of homemade
family stollen                                  (EE)

how the time feels shorter
between holidays                            (CVC)

smell of snow due soon
silent slate blue clouds hover
soothe my solo heart                       (PHS

picking oranges from
the roadside farm stand                  (EE) 

bare tree branches
reveal empty nests waiting
signals of green sprigs                     (CVC)

finding the long way
back to the office                            (AW)

wild parrots
flying against
el nino rains                                    (EE) 

the soup he makes
for me this cold day                        (CVC) 

spotted tabby tum
smiling cat face sleeping
sun patch on blanket                       (PHS) 

one last cigarette
at nightfall                                       (AW)

moon frost
the chill in her words
after the smile                                  (CVC) 

crunching bubbles
fists deep in my pockets                 (PHS)

city walk
another fruitless
search for stars                                (AW)

lightning flashes
on the darkest night                        (EE)

dream waked
slip from bed unnoticed
drink in Christmas tree glow          (PHS)

another cup of tea
to warm me from the inside            (AW)

all the gifts
yet to be wrapped
or bought                                         (EE)                

the two weeks it takes
to heal from surgery                        (CVC) 

one year in
a stack of moving boxes
still unpacked                                  (AW)

glitter spangled envelopes
piled on the kitchen counter           (PHS)

magnolia trees
rethinking landscapes and scents
to wake to                                       (CVC) 

wassailing within
as sirens wail outside                      (EE)