Rengay Website Review

by John Thompson

If you wish to learn to write rengay, or learn more about the history of rengay, I suggest that you make a beeline to rengay.com, a website created and maintained by Michael Dylan Welch. This site will answer most any questions you have about this form of collaborative poetry that has steadily gained popularity among haiku poets around the world in the past 31 years.

Michael Dylan Welch is an accomplished haiku poet who has held many leadership roles in the haiku world as a writer, editor, collaborator, event organizer, and all-around poetic dynamo. His central role in nourishing rengay includes writing the first rengay with Garry Gay; publishing the first rengay book; proposing the three-person variation of rengay and writing the first three-person rengay with Claire and Patrick Gallagher; introducing rengay to hundreds of poets; participating in writing the first six-person rengay in Santa Rosa, California in 2002; judging numerous rengay contests; publishing a solo rengay book, True Colour (2014); as well as presenting many seminal essays on rengay.

On rengay.com Michael currently has posted hundreds of examples of rengay that he has written with a wide variety of writers encompassing all the different forms of rengay: two-person rengay, three-person rengay, six-person rengay, and solo rengay. There are so many good rengay. I encourage readers to browse around rengay.com to find their own favorites. One that stood out to me was a three-person rengay entitled “Against the Glass” by Michael Dylan Welch, Margaret Rutley, and Sidney Bending. The overall theme is clear and engaging, the individual verses are all wonderful individual haiku on their own, yet the sum certainly resonates much more than the parts as in any good rengay (or any poem for that matter).

Against the Glass

summer vacation—

the aquarium door handle

shaped like a seahorse Michael

mesmerized . . .

a bloom of lucent jellyfish Margaret

sticky fingers

the sea urchin twitches

in a touch tank Sidney

the look in its eyes

circling shark Michael

teenagers tap

against the glass

a cloud of octopus ink Margaret

asleep at sunset

two otters holding paws Sidney

Rengay.com also has a delightful section focusing on rengay written about different cities of the world. Other sections feature rengay essays from Michael and a variety of other writers with section titles such as “Learning Rengay,” “Studying Rengay,” “Publishing Rengay,” and “Essays on Rengay by Others.” A major portion of the site still under construction will present an anthology of the best rengay from rengay’s first thirty years of existence.

I can’t overstate how important a resource this site is to the rengay community. Thank you, Michael, for creating and maintaining such a wonderful online home for rengay!