About Haiku
By Rhonda Byrne

The primary purpose for reading and writing Haiku is sharing moments of our lives that have moved us, pieces of experience and perception that we offer or receive as gifts. At the deepest level, this is the one great purpose of all art, especially of literature.

However, the rules for writing traditional Haiku are as many and as varied as there are writers. Indeed, modern writers are emerging who contravene all the rules as practiced by the early Japanese masters of the art of Haiku. With its beginnings in the great age of Renga during 17^th century Japan, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was a master who made his living traveling around the country teaching people the art of Renga and linked poems such as Haiku and Tanka. In its traditional form it usually has two rhythmical units – one of about 12 onji (the Japanese equivalent of a syllable) and one of about 5, the break between them often marked with a special grammatical device called a kereji or cutting word. Since the break between the two rhythmical units is equally likely to occur after the first 5 onji or after the first 12, the normal rhythm of a traditional Haiku in Japanese is 5, 7, 5, onji.

The form for traditional Haiku originated in the incomplete opening stanza of a longer poem. The Haiku form is therefore rhythmically incomplete. Haiku often omits features of normal grammar such as complete sentences and complicated verb endings. For a time in Japan, 7, 7, 5, form was almost as common as 5, 7, 5, but by the end of Basho’s career, 5, 7, 5, had become the norm, and has remained unchanged in Japan.

Modern writers in Western society have used many variations of the 5,7, 5 rule which are not Haiku, according to Professor Joseph Adams, lecturer at Washington D.C.University, who addressed the International Society of Poets Symposium on the topic of Haiku, in 1998, which I attended. He insists these forms should be given other names, and was emphatic about the 5, 7, 5, three line count.

Other guidelines for Haiku writers:

1. Haiku does not use titles. The first line is used for reference purposes. The words of the Haiku should stand on their own.
2. Haiku is always written in 3 lines. Tanka has an additional 2 lines of 7 syllables each with a line space after the Haiku section.
3. Haiku should contain a seasonal word or words that suggest a season.
4. Haiku does not use the contrivances of other poetic styles such as rhyme unless it happens naturally. It uses the natural flow of voice patterns.
5. Do not start each line with a capital letter unless this occurs naturally after punctuation. The use of enjambment (one line flowing on to the next) is preferable to short, staccato phrases.
6. Symbolic reference is often used in interpreting deeper meanings, e.g. reference to a crow may allude to death or a dove to peace. Some Haiku presents one image superimposed on another.
7. Haiku is rarely about individuals and does not often use the personal pronoun. There is a derivation of Haiku called SENRYU which does just that.

One explanation for the emergence of so called Haiku that deviates from the 5,7,5, rule is based in translations from Japanese into English. In Japanese the onji count was 5,7,5, but this was lost in translation, giving rise to the adoption of variations to the syllable count of 5,7,5. Play it safe and abide by the rules outlined above for successful Haiku and Tanka writing.

Email Rhonda Byrne: rmbyrne@hotlinks.net.au

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