Well, this is fantastic. Adam L. Kern's new Penguin edition is not definitive but it's certainly glorious. In a lengthy introduction, Kern details the history of the artform and explains the complexities readers will find herein. The old five-seven-five single-stanza natural-world-pondering haiku which we westerners associate with poetry is only the tip of the cultural iceberg.

Kern is at pains to point out the scatological brand of haiku that runs through Japanese history, as well as the long strands of connected verses, often composed in improvisational competitions. On top of this, we realise the deep interconnections between poems, as writers responded to or retorted to existing haiku, as we recognise how a millennium of Japanese culture came to be represented in these sparse-but-densely-symbolic verses.

The introduction is long and at times academic, but well worth it. The anthology itself collects around 1,000 haiku dating up until the end of the 19th century, all translated by Kern, in a style that varies from inventively witty ("watersound" for "plop") to modern slang, especially in the more filthy verses. In the equally long explanatory notes, he provides the original haiku in Romanised Japanese, and helps to clarify the often obscure double- and triple-meanings hidden in the specific word choices. What stands out is the playfulness, and the defeating realisation that we are so far removed from this culture so as to barely understand a 17-syllable poem.

This publication won't be the be-all and end-all of your haiku experience, but it provides the tools to explore further yourself, and is a rip-roaring read along the way. ( )