Once again, it is National Haiku Writing Month! Just like novelists and musicians who have months designated to inspire them: National Novel Writing Month and National Solo Album Month, so do haiku poets! I wonder why they are all in the winter?!
“Daily writing prompts are posted to this wall … You can follow the prompts if you wish or post off-prompt — doesn’t matter.” So it says on the Facebook page started by Michael Dylan Welch. I had fun doing it last year, and Michael had so much success with it that it kept going long past February!
The tag on Twitter is #nahaiwrimo.
NaHaiWriMo
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Yes, Nathan-san, but one must I feel learn and work for a very long time from the original form before emerging, or evolving in a natural, organic way. A haiku poet must carry the history of haiku (lightly) around in his/her head before arriving at their own new experience.
-Patrick
Isn’t there such a thing as modern Haiku, which isn’t given to the “nature” theme? I like to write about nature, but I find the “Haiku form” is a great way to limit oneself to write what otherwise couldn’t be written. Call it what you want, but I’m all for “expansion” of the Haiku and experimenting. Being a purist doesn’t help those who wish to emerge. This is why it’s so hard to be a poet–people are staunch.
I don’t understand how advocating for moving away from 5-7-5 in ELH is somehow anti-Japanese racism. Are three line ELH racist in nature since Japanese haiku are written in one vertical line and have no differentiation of lines? Are they racist because word order in English matters and it doesn’t in Japanese? “He eats pie” means something completely different from “Pie eats he.” So am I a racist by insisting that word order in ELH adhere to English language strictures of word order? Does that make me anti-Asian because I think ELH should follow the actual English language? Hell, are ELH racist by their very nature because they are not written in Japanese pictographs?
The universally accepted symbol for “no” is not a swastika, no matter how many places you say it nor how loud you say it.
Dimitar: As you know, your arguments were absolutely obliterated the last time you raised them. See here for a reminder: https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-haiku-circle/prompts-feb-13-national-haiku-writing-month/439252596145534 — in sum, every point you’ve made is untrue, and your conclusion is unreasonable.
Your comparison of NaHaiWriMo to the Ku Klux Klan, and its symbol to a swastika, would be a despicable insult to the African Americans and Jews tortured and killed by those groups if it wasn’t so utterly laughable.
The world is filled with enough real problems that manufacturing one like this is particularly pointless. I fine you sad, frankly.
Dimitar, while it’s nice that you helped to support that little girl’s poem, I can think of no haiku journal that would publish a child’s poem — 5-7-5 or not — unless it was good enough to publish. You could have just as easily sent them a one-line haiku or a vertical haiku or any other form and they would have rejected it. That doesn’t mean the haiku community is anti-”5-7-5″ or doesn’t want to help children.
And you’re right — teaching children how to count syllables is a good method for helping them to learn and get used to the form, but too often they are taught ONLY that haiku should be 5-7-5 syllables and not much else (except maybe that it’s about nature). That notion sticks with them throughout life, which is how we get books like Homeowner Haiku, Zombie Haiku, and Haiku for the Single Girl — books that contain lots of stuff written in 5-7-5 format but barely any haiku.
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