With the rapid pace of the events of our times, it had never been more important to share your perspective. What better form than haiku to get a snapshot of your thoughts and experiences!
Send us your haiku/senryu poems taken from the news of the week and observations of life in 2020. Whether snapshots from daily events, marches, quiet moments in quarantine or Zoom meeting frustrations, we want all your short poems anchored in the NOW. All are encouraged to submit. Submissions with racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic or other hate speech will not be considered.
The best will be showcased weekly here and on all our social media platforms, along with links to your media. The BEST of the best will be compiled into an anthology of haiku published by Nick Virgilio Haiku Association’s imprint Upright Remington Press.
Submissions close each week on Friday. Prompts are posted on Tuesday. The weeks featured 8 haiku are posted on Thursday.
To submit, please fill out our form here. Submit up to 3 haiku. Please consider a donation of $1 -5 per entry to support this and other NVWH programming.
What is a Haiku poem in English today?
Haiku is a short form poem that often has these characteristics:
Spare, lean: no extra superfluous words
Not rhyming
the words are images, not description of images
without metaphor and simile
often divided into two sections - that expose two subjects (example: something natural and something human-made, two unexpectedly similar things)
Senryu is short form poetry resembling haiku that deals with human nature. Unlike haiku it is sometimes humorous and may contain metaphor and simile.
For many years, haiku in English was taught as a three-line format with 17 syllables sometimes arranged in a 5–7–5 pattern.
Today, haiku in English is better described as a one-breath poem – a short verse of about 10 to 14 syllables, with the second line usually the longest. Typically, haiku poems have little or no punctuation or capitalization, but may mark poem turning points with dashes or ellipses, and proper nouns are usually capitalized.
Here are some examples from the writing of Nick Virgilio of Camden:
sixteenth autumn since:
the barely visible grease marks
where he parked his car
telegram in hand
the shadow of the marine
darkens our screen door
beneath the coffin
at the edge of the open grave:
the crushed young grass
boarding the wrong bus: the heat
the funeral Mass:
in the holy water font
confetti and rice
Thanksgiving dinner:
placing the baby’s high chair
in the empty space
For more on Haiku, see check out graceguts.com and hsa-haiku.org.