| It’s always deeply satisfying to hand over an anthology of haiku to a friend or relative who is unfamiliar with such poetry. Just knowing that a friend might be thumbing through my tatty copy of Cor Van Den Heuvel’s 'Haiku Anthology' fills me with a child-like restlessness that only cools off when the book is handed back to me. I needn’t ask my friends what they thought of the collection, nor whose poetry stood out most boldly. Their enthusiasm, unfailingly, bubbles over at the pages dedicated to the work of Alexis Rotella.
Perhaps it’s a cliché to call Alexis one of the most human of haiku writers, but the way in which she continually leaves her mark on the reader, having only shed three lines of herself, is a phenomenon at which I continue to marvel. To the seasoned haiku reader, she is a fine craftswoman who perpetually surprises and delights with her poignant and exquisitely rendered moments of poetry. For newcomers to haiku and its related forms, Alexis seems to be less a poet or artist, and more a storyteller who slides open the Venetian blinds on heartbreakingly emotional, though often delicately lit and subtly exposed scenes from her life and ours. No wonder her poetry is the sore-thumb of any anthology in which it sits. When I invited Alexis to show her work at 3LIGHTS, I was at once surprised and thrilled to learn that she wished to show a selection of her haiga and taiga. Haiga combines haiku and visual art whilst taiga combines tanka and visual art – perfect, I thought, for the 3LIGHTS Gallery, which continues to exhibit haiku and related forms in the manner of a visual art gallery. And what better way to introduce haiga and taiga to 3LIGHTS than to present those of a treasured writer and artist? It’s gives me great pleasure to welcome Alexis Rotella. - Liam Wilkinson, 3LIGHTS Gallery, December 2007 |