At the moment I am listening to The Great Courses, Great Minds of the Medieval World. The course lecturer, Prof. Dorsey Armstrong maintains that for her, one sign that a sophisticated civilisation has arrived is the fact that one can choose to be a professional poet, and make a living from it. While she is probably half in jest, I would agree on the broad sweep of the statement, for surely a civilisation has reached some kind of golden era or zenith if its citizens have the time and ability to critically reflect upon their condition as human beings, in writing.

I have rarely met any professional poets who did not have a mainstream job to support themselves though I did encounter one last week, a woman who writes and teaches haiku for a living. My ears pricked up of course as this is an area of interest to me too though I am next to certain I could not make a dollar from writing them. But she does apparently and her work, from what I have read, is very good.

Looking over some of the poems that have won accolades at NHK's Haiku Masters today, I came across one that was very clever and had that lovely ring of truth about it.

The poet is Ken Sawitri, from Indonesia and the category is photo haiku.