Welcome to our new Monday feature - One Stop Poetry Form - today we look at haiku

Welcome to a New Year and a new feature for One Stop Poetry. On One Stop Form we seek to introduce you to the elements of poetic form. There are many styles that fit into form; style being like an individual signature. The form is the structure preceding the style. We all have our favorite form which we often adopt because it is what we feel comfortable with. We would love to encourage you to explore different poetry forms over the weeks and months to come. We will spend the first "session" describing the poetic form and the second week will be a time for the individual poet to do exercises with the form. Please have fun as we learn together!

For the next two Mondays we will explore Haiku

toshi kurenu / kasa kite waraji / hakinagara

another year is gone / a traveler's shade on my head, / straw sandals at my feet      Basho (master of brief and clear haiku 1685)

When I was taught haiku, I was daunted by the structure and so I did the art-work for all my friends who wrote haiku.  Haiku in the "contemporary" form is not relegated to the same rules as the original haiku. For some as long as they keep the 5/7/5 syllable format it's considered haiku. That’s how I write mine. I just write them for fun which is what a good friend, who I consider an expert, says to do “have fun with haiku."  ~MDW

How To Write Haiku 

The haiku is a very simple form of writing. So think many poets exposed to this verse for the first time. The more perceptive of them soon realise that it can in reality be rather difficult. A casual glance at magazines or web pages will often show a wealth of examples, good, bad and indifferent. On asking further, the poet usually gets told that haiku are traditionally written in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. They may also be told that all haiku include a "season word" (kigo) to indicate the time of year to which the haiku relates. For a beginning this might do.

The haiku originates from Japan. Before haiku there was renga, a regal and highly-regulated form of verse with Chinese antecedents. In the 17th century modern haiku was born in Japan. It arose, not so much from a need to write poetry as to express the feelings of Zen. Enough of history for now.

The haiku in English, or, indeed, any other "Western" language, can only go so far in reflecting or emulating the Japanese haiku and individual writers must choose for themselves how closely they adhere to the rules informally gathered by exponents of the genre. So what are some of these rules to which we should adhere or ignore at our peril? For the beginner, it is probably best, at first, to stick to the 17-syllable rule. In general an English syllable is much longer than a Japanese syllable, and so, strictly speaking, 17 English syllables are too long for a Japanese haiku. For example, in Japanese, Tokyo is four syllables: To-o-kyo-o. For this reason, some authors consider the correct format to be 2-3-2 beats rather than 5-7-5 syllables.

But certainly
"The simple writing
of seventeen syllables
doth not haiku make"

[This poem entitled "Not a Haiku" by Gerald England is from "The Art of Haiku" (New Hope International, 1990)]

Those who have studied the form and become masters of it (haijin), will tell you that a haiku is essentially the distillation of a moment. Haiku are set in nature (in the widest possible sense) and they reflect the human response to nature. Often this is by the juxtaposition of images. Essential ingredients for haiku are simplicity of language, directness of communication, rhythm (but not rhyme) and the relative absence of the narrator. The trap into which poets new to haiku often fall is in using the techniques of other poetries inappropriately. Simile, alliteration, metaphor, rhyme, personification, intellectualization and other such devices have little place in haiku. Also, since haiku are meant to be complete in themselves, a title is generally considered an unnecessary addition.

The season can be represented by any of thousands of words. If you use your imagination you can come up with all sorts of ideas as to what season different words belong. Whole books called "saijiki" have been written describing and classifying things by their season.
A variant of haiku is the form often called "senryu." The senryu is similar in form to the haiku but concerns itself with the human condition rather than nature. Hence, they do not contain a "season-word" and are often either humorous or erotic.

To sum up: — a haiku should evoke the essentials of a keenly observed moment within nature; it should include a "season-word"; it should be written in three lines of either 5-7-5 syllables or 2-3-2 beats; it should avoid the use of traditional non-Japanese poetic devices. It should be untitled. You will discover many poems published under the title "haiku" that do not observe these rules — many will have a genuine haiku quality for reasons not fully discussed here, and be perfectly admissible as haiku. Others might well be mis-named as haiku — but be quite acceptable under the label of "short poem". The Haiku Society of America spent six years in committees trying to come up with a definition satisfactory for use by dictionaries. Even now they are not completely happy with it.

For many people, writing haiku, is not just another way to package content. It is a way of life; an open-ness to and one-ness

You can learn more about haiku by following some of the links on the Art of Haiku website. The site includes details about a mailing list where writers of haiku discuss all matters pertinent to haiku and related genres.

Thank you  Gerald England for this excellent overview of haiku.

THREE  HAIKU

early spring 

the sound of frogs

being frogs

winter night

the moon peeks through

a torn cloud

on his nose 

a koi balances

the moon




The three haiku are by Don Baird in the Journal of fine haiku Ambrosia 

Important elements in Haiku: 

KIGO:

This is the traditional requirement of referring to a season or New Years. But, it has been found through intense study by experts that many Masters including Matsuo Kinsaku (Basho) skipped the season reference from time to time. However, kigo adds a lot of character to the haiku and places the event in the time of year it happened. In Japanese a kigo will provide layers of cultural resonance to the haiku.

NATURE:

Haiku are, historically, about nature (though subjects have broadened a lot over the years). The poet sees something in nature.... and in the a moment of understanding, writes a haiku that reveals the image of that moment in clear and simple words. There are no words of padding; no convoluted wordiness. But rather, they were written with the fewest words possible ...... pristine.

KARUMI:

This is a Japanese principle expounded on by Basho that the haiku should have a light characteristic about it. Haiku are not dark. Basho once said "shallow river over a sandy bed"...... when describing the lightness of haiku.

Photography: courtesy of Creative Commons and Leslie Moon

If you would like to use one of the images to inspire you to write a haiku we would love for you to share with us by using Mr. Linky