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.
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Dear Leanne,
Writing haiku only through direct experience was something I did for years, and it is not always easy to form a poem around it, with such a short ‘form’. I guess I might have moved on and into “inspired by actual events” and then factional, magical realism, and now it’s most liminal realism which I talk a lot about in my feedback.
Nowadays there is so much about haiku online, and professionally I require myself to keep on top of my research as much as I can. It’s a very affordable pursuit with walking and writing, musing at home, bringing out a notebook or a scrap of paper at cafe, or a hospital waiting area as I did recently!
Alan
Dear Rob,
My writing speed has varied from rapid and compulsory to drawn out over an hour, a day, a week, to much longer. I never know how the accelerator pedal will react!
Great phrase: “I aim for spaciousness over explanation” Love it!!!
Alan
Dear Lynette,
We know empathy is under threat so haiku is, as ever, a wonderful vehicle in troubled times, as poetry has been from early times, right through covid and war etc…
“The laugh of recognition.” is a great phrase. Even my tawny frogmouth haiku held no barriers back in England, which I was astonished about!
spring shower the honeyeater fluffs her feathers
Lynette Arden
Great haiku, great verb choice! Lots of movement!
Anatomy of a haiku, now and then
My first ever haiku contest win: Australian subject, living in Queensland; Australian organised competition judged by a famous Australian haiku poet:
dusk at the golf club
part of a marker pole
a tawny frogmouth
Alan Summers
1st Prize, Fellowship of Australian Writers Queensland Haiku Competition (June 1995)
Judge’s Report (Janice M. Bostok)
https://area17.blogspot.com/2010/08/anatomy-of-haiku.html
Breaking down my haiku using the “amicus vel inimicus” method:
dusk : time of day,
at : preposition used to indicate specific times, or location
the :
definite article, determiner to introduce noun phrase/imply common knowledge,
or something about to be defined.
golf : used as an adjective to show what type of activity
club : noun, venue, location
part : can be an adjective
of : preposition to connect nouns, show relationships and belonging
a : indefinite article suggesting general or many objects
marker : in relationship to ‘pole’ it’s an adjective
pole : noun
a : indefinite article suggesting a general or of many objects
tawny : adjective, colour, specification
frogmouth : noun, bird
A tawny frogmouth is a nocturnal bird species native to Australia, part of the nightjar family (Podargidae). Its camouflage helps it blend in with tree branches and for their “sit-and-wait” hunting strategy.
We can use this in-depth breakdown to analyse one of our first and early haiku drafts before we put it back into its intended structure (monostich, 3-line etc…) and consider any further edits.
Alan Summers
founder, Call of the Page
founder, sole editor, The Pan Haiku Review
What I find most helpful in writing haiku is nothing to do with rules or guidelines or where I happen to be located; it is the sense that I am sharing something of what I experience. I have recently been putting some of the Australian Haiku Society haiku strings into book form. When engaged in this task, I feel I have the privilege of entering the world of each poet for a brief moment. What a joy to experience a glimpse of life across the globe!
When I write, I need to communicate. Sharing our worlds and our connectedness is the most precious thing about haiku. That is why I started to write haiku. So I go for emotion, that flash of empathy, recognition, delight, finding that exact combination of words that enables another to share my experience. I remember the postboxes for haiku in Japan and the moments we share reading one another’s haiku at the end of a ginko. The laugh of recognition. Yes! Just so! Your haiku enlarge my world.
spring shower the honeyeater fluffs her feathers
Attentiveness to juxtaposition is a great way to describe an important aspect of haiku craft, Rob. Finding two images with just the right amount of distance between them to spark something surprising and meaningful, without being too obscure, doesn’t always happen easily.
Aiming for spaciousness over explanation is another interesting way to describe an approach to haiku composition. I agree that it’s important to leave space for readers to enter the poem, bringing their own experiences and imaginations.
What helps me most when writing haiku is slowing down—both in my surroundings and within myself. Haiku begins, for me, with quiet noticing. A flicker of shadow, a gust of wind, a bird’s song, a distant train – these small, fleeting moments often hold the deepest resonance.
I try not to chase a poem but let it rise naturally from a moment of encounter. Nature is a constant source, but so too are memory, dreams, and attitude. By attitude, I mean a willingness to open myself to my environment. Once something stirs me, I try to sit with it, distilling the sensation or image to its essence.
Craft-wise, I’m attentive to juxtaposition—how two images, placed with care, can spark something larger than either alone. I often write more than one version, experimenting with rhythm, line breaks, or other nuances, before settling on what feels most alive.
I aim for spaciousness over explanation, trusting the reader to step into the silence between lines. Ultimately, haiku helps me live more presently—and it’s that presence, above all, that shapes how I write them.
What do you find most helpful when writing haiku?
There are two things I do that are particularly helpful for my haiku writing process. One is undertaking ginkō. The other is reading lots of haiku by others. Both have to do with being in a receptive frame of mind. Going on a ginkō takes me out of my normal routine and allows me to pay attention to the ‘here and now’ of whatever environment I’m in. Since I tend to compose nature-based haiku inspired by direct experience, the sensory details that I tune into as I’m walking and pausing on a ginkō are the foundation for many poems. The rhythmic activity of walking is also good for allowing memories and thoughts to flow freely in association with what I’m sensing from my surroundings. I find that reading plenty of haiku by others helps to prime my mind to produce haiku. Ideas seem to arise naturally as phrases and fragments, and even whole poems, when I’ve been reading haiku. If I’m going through a fallow period, and not writing much, two great ways for me to get back to haiku composition are to pick up a haiku journal and immerse myself in it, and to head outside with a notebook and pencil. These activities aren’t unique to me. They are available to just about anyone. That’s one of the strengths of haiku composition as a creative pursuit: it doesn’t require any special equipment, can be done just about anywhere, and, with plenty of quality haiku journals available to read for free online, it needn’t cost much.
Leanne Mumford
Sydney, Australia
These small moments in time that help to highlight nature, a feeling, a sense of belonging, the preciousness of our natural world. The 3 lines seek to shine a light for the reader to enjoy and reflect on the seasonal elements and how they impact the texture of colour, plants, birds, animals and the weather to name a few.
falling leaves
lost in the margins
of sunset
Joanna Ashwell
To me a haiku captures a moment in time, in the past, present, or future – in as many less syllables as possible and dresses it in image(s) that describe it. This forms the base of the haiku and incorporating the kigo and Kira creates a haiku that stands out as an example. And reading and re-reading it is what gives the haiku a shine of its own.
Example:
atop the mountain
clouds and i
passing time
— Lakshman Bulusu,
Princeton, NJ, USA