Creeping Sepia:
Alan Summers, and his full saijiki notes
for:
The 1st Modern Kigo Competition
(January 2022)
This was my full entry which helped win that very first modern kigo contest:
new kigo: creeping sepia
Season: Autumn
Short Definition:
The transition into Autumn (Fall) as Summer fades, with a growing mixture of climate change effects, and nostalgia for when seasons were clearly defined.
Longer Definition:
A combination of the transition into Autumn (Fall) as Summer fades, and a mixture of climate change effects bringing out an urge for a nostalgia of historically fixed and clearly defined seasonal shifts of the past. This might also include childhood/family photographs that might have been in colour but now have a creeping sepia effect.
adjective: creeping
occurring or developing gradually and almost imperceptibly.
noun: sepia
Sepia ink was commonly used within the Greco-Roman era, and remained in common use as an artist’s drawing material until the 19th century. Acclaimed Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky used a sepia tone in his 1979 science-fiction movie Stalker to visually distinguish scenes set in the forbidden Zone from the real world:
“the poet in his brown coat – a figure enmeshed in ground.”
Stalker (film)
Sepia sometimes seen as the “Colour of Nostalgia” now often runs into Bladerunner Sepia (orange skies of pollution). Now, with changes in the seasonal cycles fast-forwarded by humanity, the normal changes are no longer immutable, sometimes creeping up on us, and into the rest of nature.
This kigo also exudes Mono No Aware (物の哀れ) (n.) lit. “the pathos of things”; the awareness of the impermanence of transience of all things and the gentle sadness and wistfulness at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.
creeping sepia
the rustle of non-human
at first light
Alan Summers
1st Prize
International Modern Kigo Competition
January 2022
The results were announced on February 1st, 2022
Other ‘creeping sepia’ kigo by Alan Summers:
.
creeping sepia
a dog that outran
the wind
Alan Summers
Publication credit: Presence issue #71 (2021)
.
creeping sepia the threshold of the forest becomes song thrush
Alan Summers, Whiptail: journal of the single-line poem issue 2 (January 2022)
.
creeping sepia
the dust motes
of rifles
Alan Summers
First publication:
Seashores Issue 9 (November 2022)
Feature:
Meet… Alan Summers
seashores, an international journal to share the spirit of haiku
Issue 9 (November 2022)
https://haikuspirit.org/seashores9.html
creeping sepia
the gravity inside
beech masts
Alan Summers
Blo͞o Outlier Journal issue 3
the natural history haiku edition (Summer 2022)
ed. Alan Summers
dedicated to Gene Murtha
About the 2nd Modern Kigo (Spring) Contest:
Haiku Basecamp 
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