Haiku poetry is very simple, but like may things, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that doing it well is easy.
A (very) little history
The haiku is an form of poetry more than a thousand years old. Traditionally, Japanese poetry was strictly structured, consisting of a series of on, a japanese word meaning sound. The original form of the poetry was a tanka, a poem with a triplet of 5-7-5 on followed by a couplet of 7 on. In the 16th century, Japanese poetry changed and became less rigid and lighter in tone. This form was called haikai no renga or renku and was performed in groups with poets spontaneously creating responses to the previous poet’s offering. The opening verse of the renku is the triplet, called the hokku. The hokku began to appear as a stand alone poem in the late 16th century and in the 19th century the name of the form was changed to haiku.
How to write a haiku
In English, we translate on into syllable, and so our haikus are similarly written in the triplet form of 5-7-5 syllables. A sample haiku is shown below.
This is the first line
and this is the second line
while this is the last.
Please feel free to try your hand at writing a haiku of your own, and if you’d like to post one, just pick a secret ingredient from the list and give it a shot!