My ethos as renga/renku/linked verse form editor is to remember that they are collaborative poetry, even solo pieces, because we must not forget the reader, our public. All poetry should involve the reader, should invoke the reader, otherwise, like a rudderless boat, there is a readerless poem.
I feel that the reader, who did not have the good fortune to be present at either a live renga/renku party, or at least present on an online process of creating this collaborative renga, must be wooed like a lover.
The basic criteria for me and others as editors are the obvious ones that an editor looks for in any creative writing form, as well as the obvious criteria for renga/renku and other haikai linking forms, so I needn’t repeat what is easily found elsewhere on the net.
What I am looking for in conjunction with this, is that the reader who was not present at the creation of the linked form should now feel included. I can’t emphasise this strongly enough.
I am both a reader and an editor when something is submitted to me. I am not just the close reader, the forensic editor, gauging the mechanics, but as a reader wanting to be excited as a reader first, and then as an editor.
What is the difference? I can only speak for myself that I look for something that grabs me, is contemporary, yet with a nod to the past. That I am included in, as Joe or Jo Reader, and where I can go and visit what lies between and underneath the writing itself, not if I know or recognise the authors.
The wider audience will not know all or any of these authors, and so the writing must invite them in, and then of course they will look for those authors again. But foremost, above all, they will want to come back for the writing itself, whoever the authors may be, as Notes from the Gean introduces haikai literature and tanka to a wider audience.
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Alan Summers
Linked Forms Editor