In the spotlight

Matsuo Basho, the pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa (1644-94), was a renowned Japanese poet. Born into a prominent samurai family, he rejected that world and became a wanderer, studying history, classical Chinese poetry and Zen while living in apparently blissful poverty.

From 1667 he lived in Edo (now Tokyo), where he began writing haiku. This is a traditional Japanese poetic form: short, unrhymed, with three lines of five, seven and five syllables each, including a word suggestive of a season, achieving intensity through limited space, and portraying an atmosphere of peace and simplicity.

Here is a typical Basho:

When a thing is said,

The lips become very cold

Like the autumn wind