The love that brings renku poets together is necessary, now more than ever.
We live in a world of deep divisions, deep fears, and deep violence. Writing renku, poets work (or maybe a better word is "play") in a spirit of cooperation rather than in the pervasive Western mode of ego-driven individualism and competition.
And let's be fair, this "Western" mode of thought and life applies not only to Europeans and Americans but also to millions of citizens of capitalistic, modernizing Asia, Africa, and the Third World.
Why renku? Because renku is an act of love at a grammatical level. Friends, in loving relationship, offer verses that function like strands of DNA, linking with their companions' strands to produce a dazzling variety of images and ideas that no one of them, working alone, could ever achieve.
Our poem, not mine.
And there's a last reason...