Yemisi Blake and I met at the South Bank to talk about the next phase of his guest blogging.

Yem shows me his notebook. We discover that we both like hands and feet.

We talked about how some of the ideas behind ON are informing the way he notebooks. The H00die Project is looking great and we’ll showcase more of it here in the coming months.

We also decided to write a collaborative piece together on Open Notebooks. I suggested a renga and Yem liked the idea. This is a collaborative Japanese form, that utilises the 5-7-5 syllabic 3-line format of the Haiku, followed by a 7, 7 syllable 2-line verse that shifts the poem on. Check this site for more on renga.

Now here’s the EXCITING bit. Yem is off on a train trip round India with 350 creative young entrepreneurs.

Yem's Route Round India

So the Renga will document his travels with a post from each of the 13 stops. We’ll be moving from the season to season, hemisphere to hemisphere as I respond from the snow-driven streets of Blighty, incorporating the moon, a flower, love – as the renga form dictates – and subverting it by posting ‘haiku photos’ to complement each iteration.

I was inspired to write a Hai Bun recently: this is a short piece of prose/prose poetry followed by a haiku. The haiku’s relation to the text is non-linear, so it addresses the underlying heart/energy of the poem rather than the narrative. I’ll be writing some Hai Bun here – but replacing the closing haiku with a photograph that performs the same function. This is how we’ll aim to use the photographs in the renga.

Yem will text/email me his verses and images from India and I’ll upload them here. I get to start, as I invited Yem to take part in the renga. I’ll do that in a separate post so the piece builds.

I can’t wait. I’m off to start the first installment.