KAC Kansas Authors Club 2016

Haiku 202 + Japanese Forms

In this workshop, we will begin with an overview of haiku and move into other forms like senryu, tanka, renga, and others. We will also explore how contemporary poets are using the forms and write our own. Participants will leave with several poems and a strategy for writing more.

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Beginning List-Making

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Haiku 202

on


kigo


kireji


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Find a partner: Experimental Haiku

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Other forms

Senryu: Like haiku, but instead of nature these are about human flaws. They often also have a dark humor.

Tanka: The Japanese tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form. Similar to a sonnet (which ironically means “little song”) as there is a turn.

Kyoka: means “wild” or “mad poetry.” Is a popular, parodic subgenre of the tanka form of Japanese poetry with a meter of 5-7-5-7-7.

Renga: Means “linked poem,” to encourage collaboration. Like linking tankas, where the first person writes a haiku, and the second person writes a couplet of seven syllables each. The next person
becomes the first person, while another follows as the second. Continue on. Theme is important for its success.

Haibun: Haibun combines a prose poem with a haiku. The haiku usually ends the poem as a sort of whispery and insightful postscript to the prose of the beginning of the poem. Another way of looking at the form is thinking of haibun as highly focused testimony or recollection of a journey composed of a prose poem and ending with a meaningful murmur of sorts: a haiku. The result is a very elegant block of text with the haiku serving as a tiny bowl or stand for the prose poem.

Haiga: Haiga are typically painted by haiku poets and often accompanied by a haiku poem. Similar to a comic book?

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As a way to write a contemporary form of haiku: When we think of writing haiku, we think of our connection with nature. However, we are at a time of environmental uncertainty. Whether it be the manufacturing and results of plastic, the need to minimize trash via recycling, to local, national, and global environmental concerns, one can argue is it is possible to write haiku while ignoring the possibility of human extinction. Maybe the choice of not choosing to be socio-political is a socio-political choice? Let’s make a new kind of haiku.

Make a list of your environmental concerns, locally, nationally, or globally.

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Thank you so much for coming and participating! I hope you have a wonderful time this weekend.