An Interview with Aidan Barger

I will never again be the person I was when I wrote those poems or took those photographs.

On October 16, 2020, Aidan Barger shared the first of his five creative works titled Haibun Postcards that combine the written art of long form poetry and haiku with original photographs. Inspired by small pockets of wildness around the Palouse, Aidan zoomed in on essential elements — flowers, grasshoppers and railroad tracks — that become keys to unlocking his experience of the environment. In this interview, I asked how his photography and writing influenced each other in the creative process and what drew him to haibun as the poetic form for this project. 

What inspired you to choose haibun? 

I first learned what a haibun was in my English 101 class eight years ago. I love the form because of the way it seamlessly blends haiku with nonfiction writing. There's something very elegant yet also unpretentious about haiku, and it is perfect for capturing solitary, transient, and significant moments. 

How heavily did the content of the photos inform the way you wrote the poems?  

The famous haiku poet Bashō is purported to have said, "Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine." The photographs I took for this project were my attempts to "go to the pine." They were not different from the poems themselves, they were the poems, and I was there to find out what made each moment significant to me, what made each wild edge-space stand out to me. 

What was your process for finding locations to take pictures of?  

I remember asking Dr. Russo for suggestions for wild edge-spaces to photograph, which is how I ended up going to Wawawai Park. The other locations I simply found by exploring Google Maps and attempting to locate places where wildness mingled with civilization. 

I liked how your first two photos put spotlight on insect life, then the rest transitioned into capturing the surroundings. Why do you think your attention shifted?  

This was not necessarily a deliberate choice. I stopped seeing as many insects at the locations I visited, and I didn't want to shoehorn an insect into every piece, so I tried not to force it. 

How did the postcard form impact the way you described these locations? 

I like the idea of a postcard as a little snapshot of a place and a time. A place and a time that will never be together in exactly the same way again. I will never be in those wild edge-spaces in exactly the same way again. And I will never again be the person I was when I wrote those poems or took those photographs. The world has changed, and I have changed, and if I wrote these poems as postcards again, they would be completely different. 

What is the value of zooming into the small details of nature in a poem?  

Small details are everything. As many poets have said, observation and attention are akin to prayer. By focusing on these small details in nature, we honor them, we honor life, and we honor ourselves. We crack open geodes of beauty. 

I notice in your series of poems there are some recurring images like the wind, did the choice of imagery come to you in the moment, or did you set out to follow a particular theme? 

I never set out to follow a particular theme; I simply picked out details from the environment that inspired me, and then wrote about them. I tend to believe that themes should be naturally arising, and not something that is picked first and then adhered to. 

How did COVID-19 affect the way you chose the subjects of your photos? 

I do think it influenced the form I chose for my project. In 2020, I felt very alone. I felt cheated out of my "college experience." I was scared and anxious and depressed (as I think most of us were). I was desperate to find a way of living that would relieve me from fear of the future and allow me to let the past go with as little pain as possible. Haibun seemed a potent way to enter the present moment, appreciate its beauty, and then let it go without superfluous words. Maybe I was trying to train myself to become okay with impermanence (I'm still not). 

The Haibun form was used by famous Japanese poet Bashō to describe the landscapes he visited. What inspired you to write this series using this form? 

Mrs. Carlson at Wenatchee Valley College introduced me to the real practice of haiku, and by extension, haibun. Both of these forms embrace a kind of living awake to the transitory wonders of every moment. There's something holy in the mundane, something wonderful about just going about the daily activities of our lives. The Zen master Dōgen said, "Each and every extraordinary activity is simply having rice." Maybe replace, "simply having rice," with "washing the dishes," or "watching grasshoppers," or "looking at clouds," or "scrubbing the sink." Haiku and haibun are perfect for expressing beautiful mundanity. This is why I chose to write my postcards as haibun. 

Michael Conley is a Creative Writing Major at Washington State University who earning an Editing and Publishing Certificate. A fiction writer, he hopes to publish novels and short stories. Watch out, Brandon Sanderson!