Haiku for Young People

Haiku are poems written with a limited number of syllables (not necessarily 5-7-5, fewer is often better), in the present tense, comparing sensory images of nature. There are no opinions or judgements from the author – limited adjectives, and mostly no adverbs, similes, metaphors or personification. They do not rhyme.

They can capture your heart, transporting you to the reality of that moment for the poet. The haiku is not complete, until it is read and understood by the reader.

Alan Summers is a Japanese poetry expert, a widely published and translated haiku poet, and a tutor & workshop leader. I have done workshops with Alan – he has a quietly extraordinary way of inspiring the ability to write haiku! (Which, in my case, mostly disappears a few hours later!)

Alan and his talented wife, Karen Hoy, have kindly sent some young people-accessible haiku.

 

painting fences

a wish to be the green

of dragons

 

Alan Summers

 

 

northern lights

a boy makes a ladder

out of his telescope

 

Alan Summers

 

 

almost lost

in the shimmer of water

several ducklings

 

Alan Summers

 

 

woodfire

flickering in the silence

corralled horses

 

Alan Summers

 

 

Kilimanjaro

looking for the peak

and then looking higher

 

Karen Hoy

 

Publications credits for haiku in order:

Alan Summers: Brass Bell theme: Colorful Haiku (May 2017)

Alan Summers: Blithe Spirit 24.3 (August 2014)

Alan Summers: Presence 42 (2010) (This haiku was hand carved into a river boulder on the Haiku Pathway, Katikati, North Island, New Zealand.)

Alan Summers: Modern Haiku vol. xxvi  no. 3 (USA 1995)

Karen Hoy: Part of This Lion Country sequence (Serengeti) Presence issue 57 March 2017 ISSN 1366-5367