haiku & the act of listening

A short walkthrough of the workshop, slide by slide.

  1. This is a workshop about haiku I first gave online where I showed a lot of haiku to explore the form and used a custom-built app for writing haiku together.

  2. First, let's talk about the form of haiku. What you might know: it is a traditional form of poetry from Japan with three lines of 5-7-5 syllables

  3. You can tell the poems are very short. There's no room for big explanations, only to paint the picture and the reader gets to interpet that. But there's still craft, an anticipation that's created.

  4. So, translation is hard. Languages are complex and don't always fit into the same patterns. There are some English poets who have written haiku adhering to the syllable count, but many translators focus on the spirit of the haiku rather than the form. Most of my examples will be from Japanese poets and have been translated into a more standard English stanza. But the history of the form in Japan is also interesting and worth sharing

  5. A precursor to haiku are collaborative linked verse poems called renga. In this form, stanzas with the format of a haiku and two lines that have 7 syllables are written in a chain. This was a collaborative form, in which one poet would write a stanza and then another poet would respond with a stanza of their own.

  6. Here's a playful, fun example.

  7. This example is a bit more serious in its imagery, but you can see the connection. There are a few conventions that the poets were following...

  8. Almost every haiku has a reference to nature or something that ties to a season or the passing of time. It's interesting in how it's used: whatever objects are focused on have autonomy. It's like they're the protagonist. To me, it feels like it's trying to foster a connection and empathy with whatever's being focused on.

  9. There's this interiority of the frog and connection with the poet also peering. Also, feel the anticipation building in this poem

  10. Counter example: the rose is being cut, it's being acted upon (poetry always has exceptions).. Still, there's a deep empathy for the flower. There's mystery in the whipser, a tenderness (Also, want to point out this poem is by a woman. Most of the others I've shared are by men)

  11. In this poem, the poet is writing directly to the bird, building companionship. I feel like Issa is witty and playful. I'm often trying to interpret it through different layers, from what he's trying to recreate or picture the events for him

  12. One more example that makes me laugh I want to point out the how ordinary the scene is.. this was what surrounded him

  13. Another convention in haiku is tension. All good writing has tension and there's a lot of different things you can do with it: build it up, release it..

  14. Here, the first lines feel like a setup. "Digs into" feels so visceral

  15. Leaves the bell make me feel the release, peace. There's a rhythm in this poem that makes me think of a bell

  16. Here we paused from the lecture said to do some writing exercises in an app that I made

  17. This is what the app looked like. We first wrote exquisite corpse haiku (one line per person). Then we wrote some linked verse with the written poems being the starting poem

  18. Coming back from the exercises, I talked about listening. To me, many hiaku are listening without expectation. So often we are listening for what we want.. the things we need to learn or where we can interject to show our own value.. how we consume the news. But we can also listen without expectations. Haiku, to me, are a way of building an awareness of hte world around us and the ability to listen.

  19. I'd emphasize here the leaving your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Nature is a great place to cultivate this, but we can also bring it into our daily lives.

  20. This quote stuck out to me because it is about returning to our daily experience. The objects around us hold memories and we have emotions towards them. I believe we can listen to them.. they are a great subject for haiku. At the end of this, I'll ask you to try and listen to your surroundings to see if you can find any haiku.. haiku are all around you

  21. The flowers are present in this, they're alive

  22. Basho is talking about his possessions here.. to say something about himself (this is the first poem I've shared with an I as subject, I think)

  23. He's writing about expectations vs reality so succinclty. It's beautiful

  24. Our world is so noisy and full of distractions. There's something powerful in being able to listen. At this point, we had more time to write our own haiku and share them with each other.

I made a zine of the poems written the first time I gave this workshop.