Hana no kage - Shadow of a flowerby Ralph Hoyte Ralph Hoyte is a Bristol-based professional public poet, writer and artist who works with words live, visually and sculpturally, and increasingly, cross-artform and in new media. The very first manga-haibun. Hana no kage is based on Matsuo Basho’s - Japan’s foremost haiku master’s - sublime ‘oku no hosomichi’ (The Narrow Road to the Deep North). Hana no kage combines the high octane energy of the Japanese manga comic style with the studied formalism of ‘haibun’ and a strong grounding in Zen.