This is kind of neat.

A few weeks ago Mr Louis Josephson, a Juilliard composer, sent me an email asking for permission to use my translation for the haiku To Kill an Ant for a performance he was writing. I am more than happy to support the arts, so of course I said yes.

If you are too lazy to follow the above link to read it, here is the haiku. It was written by Shūson Katō.

It's a nice haiku, presenting a tricky situation that most parents will find themselves in at one time or another. Oh, I know, the idea of getting upset over killing just an ant may seem a bit silly to many of us, but it is the situation: telling your kids not to do something and then them catching you doing the very thing you said not to do. And more generally, it is killing, and killing is something that some people like to teach their kids never to do, even if it's tiny insects.

Anyway, flash forward a few weeks and he sent me a video of the performance. Watch it below. Mine is the second haiku in the performance.

It's a fun performance and they are obviously having fun with it, the singer expecially. I like these experiments with haiku. This may be something that some of the great haiku poets wouldn't have necessarily thought of or even approved of, but I think it's great to always try new things for pushing any artform in new directions and helping it evolve.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org.