Spring Equinox 2025 – Haiku Musings Event

To mark the Southern Hemisphere Spring Equinox in 2025, we offer a new interactive opportunity – a chance to contribute a Haiku Musing and to respond to other poets’ musings. The prompt question for you to muse on is:

What do you find most helpful when writing haiku?

Writing a haiku can involve many considerations, such as where you find inspiration, the kinds of experiences you like to write about, your aims and approach, the haiku craft and techniques you employ, and how you go about editing your compositions. You are invited to share your thoughts on aspects important to your haiku compositional process. 

Please keep your Musing to no more than 250 words.

You may also respond to other poets’ musings with succinct comments.

This Haiku Musing event opens on Saturday, 20th September 2025, Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST), and closes on Sunday, 28th September. 

We look forward to contributions from haiku poets worldwide.

Please enter your musing in the comments section below, and reply to a poet’s musing by using the ‘reply’ option below the comment.

52 thoughts on “Spring Equinox 2025 – Haiku Musings Event”

  1. A Story of Two Haiku Journals    posted for Rose     

    Rose van Son

    Walking the forest trails is one of my favourite pastimes. So much to see on the forest floor, so much to discover high in the trees. Walking is a journey of discovery: the river, the beach, even to the end of the street, there is so much to unearth, to haiku.

    For this I keep two journals – one, a notebook to jot any images I come across, a draft moment of what I see / hear – for sound is important to me, the crunch of dried leaves, the sound of words on the page. I take my camera for photographing fungi or wildflowers on the forest floor. Spring is prime WA wildflower season, tiny spider and donkey orchids, greenhoods, hide amongst the forest undergrowth.   A time for intense observation!   

    I note their changes from past years: were the orchids early or late? Have they reappeared at all? Nature’s loss is often overlooked. I juxtapose the past with the present; make edits, over weeks.    

    When I am happy with the haiku, I transfer it into my ‘Finished Haiku journal’.  But, I hear you say, is a haiku ever finished? Sometimes I add the date but not always: the finished haiku has already told me so much of its life’s journey. I sit with this journal, reflect and enjoy a meditative moment with a cup of tea; the haiku completed and ready for submission should a deadline arise.   

    Liked by 2 people

    1. This sounds like an excellent practice, Rose. I too, find that I need to keep haiku for a while to work on them. They often seem wonderful at first — the rosy glow of the composer suffuses the poem.

      I think it takes a while before the impact of the observation fades, so we can examine the haiku as a reader. Then we can see if it communicates effectively when removed from our first perspective of observing something, or perhaps ruminating on some observation or idea. Only the words are left. If the words alone convey something vivid, that seems like success.

      Often it takes a reader’s view to show me areas where the words are plain as daylight to me, but obscure from another’s point of view. I think of that as the difference between a private haiku, which conveys information to the one person, and a public haiku. A haiku that has meaning only to the writer is also valuable.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. As it’s gone quiet and writers have expressed so much about the writing process so well already…

    I wonder how people tackle their currently? Not just what topics, be it natural history, which I carried out extensively in The Blo͞o Outlier Journal Summer Issue 2022 The Natural History Haiku (Issue #3), but with the tiny methods and techniques from enjambment/line break choices, to no or some personal pronouns, purely direct observation only, or part direct experience part internal thought, and if so how much internal thought.

    And what do you all think about Show Don’t Tell which I never really understand for years and years, and now do not fully agree with it! <grin>

    And anything else that you can think about.

    I’ve written a lot of Australian haiku and haibun as I lived in Queensland, mostly farmland, for five years, travelled in the Northern Territory and found out a few years that my biological mother lived just on the outskirts of Perth WA.

    warm regards,

    Alan

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi Alan. I feel there were various misunderstandings when haiku spread into languages other than Japanese, one being the avoidance of using ‘I’.

      From my understanding from a Japanese language teacher, when I took classes, the Japanese avoid using ‘I’ as part of the structure of the language. Various usages have come about because of politeness. This is not the case in the English language, so there is no particular reason to avoid using ‘I’ in English language haiku.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I can’t quote a source though years ago I came across that so much is implied in Japanese that they don’t need to state personal pronouns.

        I do believe that multiple personal pronouns in any kind of writing, sentences, paragraphs, is a little too much, especially in a haiku in English.

        Of course in a tanka, at least an English-language tanka, two or three personal pronouns seem okay:

        origami trick

        I fold in on myself

        for the night

        singing

        the last bird out

        Alan Summers
        Poetry Corner: Birdsong ed. Kathabela Wilson (May 2016)

        asthma attack–

        pulling her outside

        away from friends

        her breathing steadies

        while my own trembles

        Alan Summers

        The Strand Book Of International Poets 2010

        Author: Edited by Imran Hanif and Jane Lee ISBN: 9781907340062 

        the undertaker’s 

        awkwardness

        butterflies are dying 

        as I help wrap her 

        in a winding sheet 

        Alan Summers

        The Right Touch of Sun

        2017 Tanka Society of America Members’ Anthology

        ed. Margaret Dornaus and David Terelinck

        Liked by 1 person

  3. On thinking about how I write haiku, I would say my writing falls into writing after slow reflection or “fast reflection” or just for fun.

    Slow reflection happens after either Buddhist meditation or quaker silence (worship) , this is about getting into a deep silence and then just letting an image form.  The image can then be formed into a haiku later

    Fast reflection – in practice this is not so fast. the image or idea may be weeks of months old. It may already have been expanded into a longer poem. Yet after a period of musing the actual writing with be very quick.

    Just for fun are challenges I like to set myself – can I write about this topic or that topic. In truth it is probably very similar to the fast reflection as I have been thinking about an idea for a while

    What I love about Haiku is getting to the absolute essence of an idea or an image and then juxtaposing this with a different or an insight that makes the original image deeper. Although I have been writing Haiku all my life I have only just found the Australian Haiku Society, and it is already enriching my writing. It is wonderful to read all the great Haiku and where possible share, but I am discovering the form is a lot freer than the 5-7-5 form. Although I must admit I am attracted to the old form but being able to move away from it provides flexibility and creativity  

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  4. In my early days of composing haiku I found two guides particularly helpful.

    –

    My serious interest in haiku started towards the end of a period of living in Japan. On my return to Australia I found John Bird’s approach to seasonality and the use of ‘keywords’ helped me to situate my own poems within the Australian context. I benefitted greatly from John’s considerations of seasonality and homogenous haiku.

    Seasonality: https://users.mullum.com.au/jbird/dreaming/ozku-about-kigo.html

    Homogenous haiku: https://users.mullum.com.au/jbird/dreaming/ozku-about-homogenous.html

    –

    American poet Jane Reichhold set me on the haiku path through two of her books. The first one was her Basho: The Complete Haiku (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2008), which came out just a few months before I returned to Australia. The second was her very practical Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide (Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2002), which I found in a bookshop at Narita airport on a subsequent trip to Japan. Some of Jane’s materials can be accessed at The Haiku Foundation Digital Library.

    Techniques: https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/625

    Fragment and Phrase Theory: https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/781

    –

    Leanne Mumford

    Sydney, Australia

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Hi Alison,
      Feedback is really important and in limited supply. It plays a vital role in writing haiku because it offers a perspective beyond our own immediate vision. Haiku depend on precision—every word, every pause, and every image carries weight. When we write alone, it’s easy to become attached to a phrase or idea that may not fully convey the depth or clarity we intend. Thoughtful feedback can help us notice what is hidden between the lines, so to speak, or where the rhythm falters, or when the image doesn’t quite spark.

      Just as a haiku captures a fleeting moment in nature or the human spirit, feedback provides a mirror, showing us how that moment lands with another reader. It sharpens our awareness of subtle choices—whether a seasonal reference resonates, or whether the juxtaposition of images creates the intended effect. In this way, feedback is not about correction alone; it’s a process of refining perception, learning how the poem breathes outside of ourselves.

      Ultimately, haiku thrive in community. The exchange of impressions deepens not only individual poems but also our sensitivity as writers. By welcoming feedback, we honor the tradition of haiku as a shared practice of attentiveness, where every response opens another path toward clarity and insight.

      Cheers,

      Rob.

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  6. How do you write your haiku? Are they scribbled or perhaps neatly printed in a notebook? If so, is it a special book? I use bound notebooks, the prettiest or most elegant I can find. These notebooks are never the sort that are bound together by wires at the side. I have an irrational feeling that such books will be unsafe; the poems will slip off the edge of the paper cliff.

    My latest book is a page to a day diary to encourage me to write, but many days remain blank, or are covered with scribblings about the novel I am writing, or the sequel I haven’t started. But then come a page, suddenly full of haiku that look wonderful, and the next day need much work and reappear in new drafts, or are abandoned as ideas that need reworking. What about you? I would love to hear.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Myself and Karen did design a haiku notebook, as designer notebooks hardly got used, so the off-white recycled pages, and the brown covers are excellent for getting dirty, grass stains or coffee stains, so the spell is broken, and we can just write. (smiles)

      Still like scraps of paper of course, and now we don’t use the printer, there’s lots of copier paper to fold into a make-shift notebook. I wrote a whole haibun and several monostich while waiting for my x-ray.

      I do have trouble keeping up my diary, even a fab one my mom-in-law got me, which was workmanlike.

      I do use my laptop to write and/or revise. Years since I’ve used a smartphone for notes and stuff.

      Alan

      Liked by 1 person

  7. our understanding is limited. For example, at the periphery of what you are saying, other creatures perceive the world with different focus than humans and have senses that outclass our range of perception. Haiku from the perspective of a cat? Or a bat? That is a thought to mull over. I include different creatures that live in a virtual realm that we use marginally, but only partially understand.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi Lynette,

      re:

      our understanding is limited. For example, at the periphery of what you are saying, other creatures perceive the world with different focus than humans and have senses that outclass our range of perception. Haiku from the perspective of a cat? Or a bat? That is a thought to mull over. I include different creatures that live in a virtual realm that we use marginally, but only partially understand.

      That’s certainly a case of persona haiku?

      Persona Writing in Literature Definition: 
      A literary persona is the distinct voice an author creates to tell a story or poem, like a mask worn to speak from a different perspective. 

      I’d say most animals perceive the world differently from the human animal. So far we are the only animals can create written literature. Whenever I’ve been in long sustained contact (Queensland farmland, charity landcare 2000 acre project, or Brandon Park, Bristol UK, where I spent a very harsh whole winter feeding squirrels) I’ve witnessed things that don’t even appear in wildlife filming programmes. Human animals tend to have a blinkered view whenever we base ourselves purely in an urban environment. We also know that other animals have a wider and longer range, e.g. sharks can smell blood from hundreds of meters away—in concentrations as low as one part per million (ppm).

      Even small animals, a general grouping for all of us, from mammals to insects etc…

      Atlas foothills…

      bees jostle pickers 

      for saffron

      Alan Summers

      Haiku Dialogue series: A Sense of Place: MOUNTAIN – hearing ed kjmunro

      the sound dome of bees

      how many shades of color

      can a human see

      Alan Summers

      Mainichi Best of Haiku 2015 Selected by Isamu Hashimoto

      i.e.

      Bees see colours differently than humans; their visible spectrum includes ultraviolet (UV) light, blue, and green, but not red, which they perceive as yellow or orange. Because flowers often have UV patterns or “nectar guides” visible only to bees, these flowers appear very bright and attractive to them, even if they seem plain to human eyes. INTERNET

      Of course VR can allow us to be the giant wasp or Dr Who! Both are shape-shifters too! (smiles)

      Alan

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Interesting. This morning I was looking at an oak leaf and I noticed a scribbly line, only it wasn’t as it was a mine. It had been created by a tiny moth caterpillar, a leaf miner. They spend their larval stage eating their way through a leaf, and these marks are their only trace. I wonder what it’s like to live inside a leaf, what it feels like. It seems so strange and unfamiliar.

      I write a lot about small creatures, as I find their ways of life and evolution fascinating. For a start butterflies hear with their wings. How amazing. When writing I try to see the world from their perspective. Not easy, but doing so can engender new understandings which might help with writing. At the least it engender empathy for another lifeform.

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