HOMEWARD BOUND....Prose, Poetry, Senryu, Tanka

By a Norwegian seafarer - stunning, candid reflections of a life on sea and land. Be ready for the voice of a seasoned sailor.  Published by Cyberwit.net, 2009. ISBN978-81-8253-131-4, First Edition 2009, 188 pages, paperback...$15.00.  

HOMEWARD BOUND is one in the triptych:  End Of  A Voyage, Homeward Bound, Homecoming.   

Hansen invites us to share his life’s adventures as a high seas explorer with brilliant insights at once salty, gritty, perceptive, sensitive, philosophical, spiced with irony.  His love, respect and understanding of both nature and humanity with all its foibles, vividly described.  He shocks us into the seafaring life of danger with humour and pathos. A master of prose, poetry, senryu and tanka, resulting from his studies at sea under the influence of many lands and ports.  

Hansen has also mastered many languages which gives his writing the multifaceted depth and richness of a born story teller, writer, poet.  

We feel his emotions and passion for life and the written word as he witnesses many cultures with imagination both ‘dazzling’, thought provoking, richly imbued with intimacy, dream, reality and vast visual vistas of profound awareness of nature in all its vitality.  

In conclusion, here is an example of what you will find in HOMEWARD BOUND, Karl Oskar Hansen’s  brilliant achievement.  

THE DIVORCE  

Their romance wasn’t as when ships meet in

the night, lanterns from another ship, so near,

and portholes gushing light into the sea; no

longer alone on the vast ocean  

Their saga began mundanely as a pair unlovely

container ship lain up alongside each other in

the bay waiting for trade to pick up, much to

talk about,  thought it was love and they married.  

Then crew boarded one of them and sailed her

to the coast of China plying the waters there and

time passed, when they met again in an Indian

scrap yard they had nothing more to talk about    

Senryu  

Beautiful ocean

Infuriated frothy green

Buckles iron ship 

Haiku  

Indian summer,

Is an actor who won’t share

Limelight with autumn  

Tanka  

Talk to the net

Listen to the faint echo

Of virtual droning

The unspoken loneliness,

Of dreamers caught in a void  

Tanka  

I have traveled long

Blessed by Gobi ’s new moon

Bit by scorpions

Seen tall ships sail up sail down

Vet, found my way back home

JAN OSKAR HANSEN is a poet, story teller and seafarer, born in Slavanger , Norway . He joined the merchant navy at 15 and spent most of his life at sea until settling in Portugal in the early 90’s.  The poet Hansen is fluent in several languages,  read and published worldwide in over 20 literary magazines and anthologies. His works can be found on the internet.

BARBARA ELIZABETH MERCER (Toronto, Canada) is a poet, professional visual artist, reviewer and author of 5 books of poetry, Secrets, 08, Legacy, 07, Self Portrait, 06, Mystic Wills   05 and When Poets Collide (co-authored with British poet, Steve Chering, London, UK), individual poems have been widely published in anthologies. Canadian Poetry Poemata magazines, including international art exhibitions and the internet. She is currently working on a new book of poetry Lighthouse to be published in the autumn of 2009