Slavko Sedlar, Serbia

 

 

Haiku   My chidhood oak blasted by the war: now birds make nests beneath the stars     Cows from pasture follow the sun, together, disappearing beyond the hill     Swaths of hay On a butterfly's bed— the dawning of the dew     Snowstorm— the dark trail of a tractor leads to the cemetery     Moving, glowing in the sunlight, the insides of a boat full of anchovies     Haiku walk— a verse starts with a birch branch when I begin to swing     About Slavko Sedlar, Serbia   Slavko Sedlar: I was born in 1932 in Jezersko near Krupa in Bosanska Krajina. During WWII I found myself, like other young Serbs who survived the war, in Vojvodina war orphanages, and afterwards in boarding schools in Vršac, Rijeka and Belgrade, where I completed my elementary and secondary education, as well as business school. In February 1980, with a haiku seminar held by Aleksandar Nejgebauer, I adopted haiku with Zen and discovered a new world, a world where I was to forget the Christian teachings and principles I had adopted until that time. Тhe seminar developed into the so-called “Haiku class”, that is a haiku school organized at the Vršac Literary Community, where I instructed haiku beginners. In 1982 I started the Yugoslav poetry/haiku marathon of Vršac, to which a haiku contest was added in 1985, the first and, for several years, the only one in the country. In 1996 I was commended and awarded an honorary membership by The Novi Sad Haiku Club “Аleksandar Nejgebauer” for my exceptional contribution to Yugoslav haiku. My haiku have been published in a number of literary journals, in my country and abroad, in Serbian and other languages. I am the recipient of many commendations, recognitions and awards, both domestic and foreign, and I myself have awarded many haijin as a judge of haiku contests.