Sept haï-kaïs "La petite tortue ...", is only seventeen measures long—the number of syllables in a Japanese haiku. Alexis Roland-Manuel remarked on this "mélodie": "Do not let your modesty make you forget a certain fable by La Fontaine. You hurry slowly, perhaps, but none of your steps are wasted. How many hares envy you!" The harmony is pricked with fine, expressive dissonances. For the third "mélodie", "Le coq ...", the instruments "peck" the melody with appoggiaturas in a spirit similar to that in Ravel's "Histoires naturelles" (1906). According to Andrieu, "Maurice Delage's composition is simple and refined; the composer stays ever attentive
Paul Conneally publication of "Parade of Life: Poems inspired by Japanese Prints" featuring Japanese woodblock prints alongside haiku written by children and visitors to the museum in workshop with Conneally and co-edited by former British Haiku Society Secretary and haiku poet Alan Summers. The book had launches in Bristol, UK and Akita, Japan. His work with school children to produce museum labels for artefacts on the SS Great Britain in the form of tanka, mesostic poems and riddles is featured on the Teachers' TV channel being used in a classroom by a teacher as an example of model practice in interpreting artefacts.