I started writing haiku poetry as a teenager on the advice of my English teacher (yeah, I know, that is a shameful admission…). He had noticed a tendency in my juvenile works towards a certain verbosity – I was writing Shelleyan epics at the time – and he thought that the discipline of haiku might be good for me. He was right. Learning to pack all I wanted to say into three sentences was the single most influential thing that ever happened to me as a writer. So thank you Bertie Dunbar, wherever you are; you are hereby publicly acknowledged as a major influence on my life.
Many people (especially those of the hippie generation) are aware of haiku, but very few (even those who purport to write it) truly understand its form. Simply put: the poem must have exactly three sentences and contain exactly seventeen syllables in total – no more, no less. The first line of the poem announces the subject of the meditation; the second line enlarges on the subject; and the third is a epigrammatic commentary upon it.
So follows a few of my haiku. I’ll be adding more as I write them / work my back through my old journals. One word of advice – read each one slowly and take time to savour it before moving on to the next one…