For me, haiku is primarily a state of mind, but at the same time also a fun exercise for developing creativity and enriching language skills. Haikus can be arranged in your thoughts at any moment, searching for the right word or expression that fits. Some of the haikus I have written, which have been published, are here to read. Haiku is a form of poetry originating from Japan that carries the spirituality of Zen Buddhism, with a tradition dating back to the 12th century, but it was only in the 19th century that this three-line poem began to be called haiku. Haiku evolved from the first verses of renga, a 17+14-syllable linked-verse composed on strictly defined themes with many rules, created and composed by several Buddhist masters over a long period of time.
A haiku follows the traditions of renga and in its classical form consists of three lines with a syllable count of 5+7+5. The first lines of renga, called hokku, are of significant importance. The hokku is carefully thought out and also forms a standalone whole, to which the subsequent renga lines are more spontaneous. The hokku gives the poem its mood and tone and contains a key word or a concluding word called kireji. In the 15th-17th centuries, poets such as Sōgi (1421-1502) and Sōkan (1539/40), representatives of the Buddhists, Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), Uejima Onitsura (1661-1738), and others moved towards the freer and more popular poetic form haikai no renga, still based on the structure of renga, and developed a poetic form that was understandable to the common people. Haikai no renga introduced images more from everyday themes into the verses, which, however, reduced the spiritual nature of renga and made this poetic form tasteless in the eyes of Buddhist spiritual people.
At the end of the 19th century, as Japan opened up to the world, influences arriving from the West also appeared in poetic traditions, which led to the near-complete decline of the spiritual Zen-Buddhist renga and haikai no renga, despite the efforts of the great masters of that time, Yosa Buson (1716-1784) and Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826), to continue the hokku tradition initiated by Bashō. The incursion of Western poetic traditions, which wrote about everyday things, into Japanese verses was seen as beneficial by the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), who emphasized hokku as an independent poem and named the verses speaking of everyday matters haiku, thereby giving new life to the continuation of Japanese traditions in poetry. According to Shiki, haiku is something superior that our imagination can create from everyday life.
A traditional haiku has three rules: it consists of 5+7+5 syllables, it contains a reference to a season, and at the end of the first, second, or third line a kireji, or cutting word or concluding word (this can also be a punctuation mark or a pause), is used, which divides the lines into two separate but well-connected thoughts and gives the haiku an undertone.
Freer and more Western-style haikus have abandoned the hint of the season and describe the moment of life itself, including the theme of human relationships, and use different numbers of syllables (3+5+3, one-line, one-word, vertical form, circular form, zipper with a space in the middle).
Some examples of special forms:
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lily: liilia
out of the water: veest välja
out of itself: endast väljas
bass
picking bugs
off the moon
— Nick Virgilio, Selected Haiku, 1988
***
Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
— Richard Wright, collected in Haiku: This Other World, 1998
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meteor shower…
a gentle wave
wets our sandals
— Michael Dylan Welch, HSA Newsletter XV:4, Autumn 2000
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an icicle the moon drifting through it
— Matsuo Allard, Bird Day Afternoon, High/Coo Press, 1978
***
tundra
— Cor van den Heuvel, the window-washer’s pail, 1963
***
beneath
leaf mold
stone
cool
stone
— Marlene Wills, the old tin roof, 1976
***
buoyed up on the rising tide
a fleet of headboards bang the wall
— John Carley, Magma No 19, 2001
*The text was compiled using the British Museum’s 2002 edition “Haiku,” compiled by David Cobb.