In the Beginning ~ haibun

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr

The prompt for Haibun Monday 30/03/2020: Snapshots of Our Lives, from Kim at dVerse Poets Pub, is to write a haibun that tells the story behind a poem from our personal archives. This is the story behind How I Knew I was a Poet, my video poem from 2017.

In the Beginning

I first visited YouTube in 2006, and it wasn’t long before I was making videos of my own, including video poetry. As time went on, I joined other video sharing sites. In 2010, one of the vloggers I followed was planning to travel from Chicago to Boston on his motorcycle, and he asked those along his route about meeting up for coffee. I took him to see Niagara Falls, and offered a room and a bed for the night. He told me to visit him any time, offering the use of his spare room.

The following year, we planned a meetup that included four other vloggers. Two of them also were from Chicago, one was from Washington state, and the fourth was from Missouri. Over several days, we visited a blues club, took a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture along the Chicago River, and visited the Green Mill Jazz Club (the home of slam poetry) and The Poetry Foundation. Everyone had a good time, and I had some interesting conversations about poetry at The Poetry Foundation with, little did I know, the woman who would one day be my wife.

I moved to Missouri in 2012.

whispering verses
witnessed by poets
in the beginning


Image: The Poetry Foundation, in Chicago

38 thoughts on “In the Beginning ~ haibun”

  2. I started off by making youtube poetry videos, but my poems are long, and I had little eye contact. So, then for years I taped all my poems (like 600 of them). As an ex-actor, I achieved dramatic flair. But it all became too time intensive. We used to have early hints of the prompts, which gave us more time to prepare.

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  12. ‘How I Knew I Was a Poet’ was new to me, Ken, so this prompt was my first chance to read (and listen to) it. I love the way you set the scene in the first stanza, and that the only sound is the ‘leaves rustling / with each page turned’, A wonderful way to find out you’re a poet. You’ve included so much detail in the prose o your haibun that I feel as if I was there. Poetry is a great way to meet new friends – and a wife.

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  13. ‘How I Knew I Was a Poet’ was new to me, Ken, so this prompt was my first chance to read it. I love the way you set the scene in the first stanza, and that the only sound is the ‘leaves rustling / with each page turned’, A wonderful way to find out you’re a poet. You’ve included so much detail in the prose o your haibun that I feel as if I was there. Poetry is a great way to meet new friends – and a wife.

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  16. What a serendipity way to meet your wife! 🙂 Love that little surprise as I was reading. My husband is from Chicago….we’ve done the architectural tour and it is marvelous. I do believe Chicago has the most spectacular architecture of any city in the U.S….and I am not from there!
    I enjoyed this!

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  18. I enjoyed your story immensely. Your love of poetry took you on a great adventure, and found you a life partner as well. What a lucky fellow!

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