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
Poetry Roundabout 