Dream and Haiku

     At Easter, at some point during a family gathering, I found myself sitting with four of my sisters-in-law. I don’t know how we got to talking about our dreams. One of them asked me if I still wrote mine down. Yes, of course, I’ve been noting them for many years. This practice has evolved over time, but it’s still just as important. My sisters-in-law were clearly interested in the subject and suggested I write an article about it in my blog. So here’s the story of a little dream that could have gone unnoticed but instead produced unexpected results.

     Dream.  May 2012. I was with a few people, I don’t really know who, I don’t really know where, and one of these people suggested I write a haiku rather than a narrative text. I responded that that was a good idea, and that it should appeal to the young people the text in question was intended for.

     My second children’s novel, La fille des pour toujours, had come out in March. So there were “young people” in the picture, not to mention my children to whom the dream might be referring.

     Despite these leads, and although that same evening and over the following weeks I wrote some haiku, I didn’t really follow up on that dream. In fact, it remained there, unfinished, noted in my journal, nothing more, until I opened my new Facebook page in late November. My dream then came back to me. I began writing more haiku that I published on my author page and then shared on my personal page. I had hoped to attract young people to that latter page, which was basically devoted to promoting my children’s novel.

     That didn’t work at all. The young people didn’t show up. However, I had a lot of fun coming up with these haiku. I felt alive, joyful, as I created them and I didn’t feel like stopping. So I kept making them.

     By 2013, I had quite a few of them. I put them together into a collection with other poems that I already had and then reworked. Then I decided to shape my project into more of a finished product: I would publish my haiku myself. I got the process going and this collection, stemming from the dream I’d had in 2012, finally saw the light of day last summer. I’m very happy with it.

     I’ve come to think that the young people in my dream actually reflected the young person in me, that part of me who is full of ideas and willingly takes on new projects without worrying about her age.

Copyright © Denise Nadeau