what is a haiku
"Today it may be possible to describe haiku but not
to define it."
Hiroaki Sato: Author; Columnist; and Editor of
"One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg"
"There are descriptions of haiku as there are stars
in the night sky: this is mine."
Alan Summers - Recipient, Japan Times Award for
haiku
An English-language haiku is often written in three short lines and read
out loud in about six seconds.
They're written in the present tense, in ordinary language, and work
well as two different images that spark off each other.
It's good to include one or more senses such as sound, smell, taste or
touch, and not just what we can see.
Haiku don't tell, or merely describe, they allow the reader to enter
the poem in their own way.
Haiku are ideal for non-fiction observations as a kind of short-hand
for remembering events or incidents.
They can be therapeutic and they exercise both the right and the left
side of the brain.
Traditionally haiku are rooted in natural history and the seasons, and
make us co-conspirators with wildlife, as nature half-writes the haiku
before we've even put pen to paper.
Haiku have a seasonal clue called kigo in Japanese.
Obvious season words are snow for winter; and heatwave for summer;
but you could use less obvious kigo like beer for summer, and Orion or Orion's
Belt for winter.
Try out the haiku fieldbook and become a co-poet with nature or check
out the other choices of workshops.
Where does haiku come from?
Haiku comes from a "first verse" called hokku; they often look
incomplete as they originate from a linked verse poem where the first verse
was finished by the second verse. They have a special place in the multi-poet-multi-linking-verse-poem
known as renga, or renku, that enjoyed a renaissance in 17th Century Japan;
and people started collecting them as not all the composed hokku on the day
could be chosen to start off the renga.
Then Japanese writers began to adapt foreign literary techniques in poetry
as Japan was opened up to the West. Journalist, writer, and poet Masaoka
Shiki took full advantage when he officially made hokku an independent poem
in the 1890s called haiku (singular and plural spelling) and brought haiku
into the 20th Century.