HCSHR 6:18 - Hassane Zemmouri, Small Lantern

Zemmouri, Hassane; Bauer, Bea; Brettou, Magali. Small Lantern. Buttonhook Press, 2023. 28 pages. PDF at https://ojalart.com/wp-content/uploads/zemmouribreton.haiga_.8.25-x-8.25-inch-20.96-x-20.96-cm.pdf. 

 Review by Dave Read

 

Small Lantern is a free pamphlet of thirteen haiga available from Buttonhook Press.  Hassane Zemmouri’s haiku are set against photographs by Magali Bretou and Bea Bauer, resulting in haiga that are greater than the sum of their parts.  These pieces are successful in how the poems and pictures do not repeat each other.  Rather, as Lavana Kray says in the foreword, they “have only one point in common, the rest being left to the reader’s imagination”.

 

A good example of this philosophy can be seen in the fifth haiga of the collection.  The haiku…

 

the way back—

how can we escape

our scars?

 

…is set against a picture of an old farmyard.  The house and barn have not been maintained and have weathered with time.  The withered buildings looked scarred themselves, working as a point of reference to the human scarring in Zemmouri’s haiku.

 

Likewise, the augmentation of haiku and photograph can be seen in Small Lantern’s eighth haiga.  Here the poem…

 

orphanage

from hand to hand

one doll

 

…rests upon a picture of an empty, abandoned room.  The room is primarily dark with some light coming in through its two windows.  Metaphorically, I take the light to be symbolic of the haiku’s doll:  a small token that provides some happiness in what is otherwise implied to be a bleak existence.

Small Lantern is a good collection of haiga. I recommend readers have a peek by clicking on the link to this pamphlet above.

 *****

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