Your simple guide to writing Haiku

 

The starting point is that every Haiku must have 17 syllables, and only 17. If it's 16 syllables, or 20, or 17 and a half (?) then it's a broken Haiku and has to go back to the Haiku menders.

Haiku typically use three lines, following a pattern of five syllables, seven syllables then five again.

They seek to express a thought or to capture a moment in a way that transcends the words themselves, so that we recognise a universal human emotion and a glimpse of our own mortality.

Although some of them are just a load of rubbish that doesn't scan and they're still Haiku really...

The internet is full of top tips about the dos and don'ts of Haiku, so why not try something out there? Google search engine reckons that there are approximately 355,000 possible links relating to Haiku so it shouldn't be too difficult to find somewhere to start... just click here to see what some of them are

Or why not try The Shiki Internet Haiku Salon which is at
http://mikan.cc.matsuyama-u.ac.jp/~shiki/Start-Writing.html

It's got a simple guide to what Haiku is all about and how to compose them.

The same is true of the genteel home page of Rodrigo de Almeida Siqueira, which features his own guide to haiku at http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/poet/haiku.htm

Then, when you get serious you can take the Haiku questionnaire that's at http://mikan.cc.matsuyama-u.ac.jp/~shiki/enquet.html about how many you're writing and about what.

There are many sites that explain how to make Haiku, but rather than knocking up your own it's sometimes more fun finding other people's work by rummaging around on the net. For example I found this author's work, with pictures, by searching for 'brighton uk haiku' in Google (a really great search engine) http://www.lowplaces.net/between_index.shtml

But above all this Haiku hactivity, the mighty SPAM Haiku Archive stands as a wobbly pink testament to the 'what does it all mean?' school of poetry. This is a collection of hundreds of thousands of 17 syllable diversions into cold meat barminess, typified by haiku number 9354:

Reading Brighton Rock.
Distracted by this haiku;
Why SPAM, of all things?

--IMP, aaweinma@coe.edu

But back to the serious stuff - for a more academic and historical perspective check out http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ehisinx.shtml which profiles ten great haikuists from the past 500 years.

Now get Haiku-ing and send us your words..

Now click here to go to the page for writing Haiku

Read Haiku here on the site. There are also whizzy Flash versions of the Haiku that appear on the buses around Brighton and Hove. Click here

Have Haiku sent to you as a text message on your mobile phone. Click here