Category: Haiku Musings

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.

Spring Equinox 2025 – Haiku Musings Event Preliminary Notice

To mark the Southern Hemisphere Spring Equinox in 2025, we will be offering 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, haiku craft and techniques you employ, and how you go about editing your compositions. You will be invited to share your thoughts on aspects important to your haiku compositional process. 

Please keep your Musing succinct, to no more than 250 words.

During the event you will also be invited to respond to other poets’ musings with succinct comments.

This Haiku Musing event will open on Saturday 20th September 2025, Australian time, and close on Sunday 28th September. 

Why not start thinking now about what you might like to share with fellow poets? If you’d like to read some more substantial invited musings from our archives, please visit the dedicated category Haiku Musings. We look forward to contributions from haiku poets worldwide.

The Healing Power of Haiku: Maureen Sexton

Bee on flowerI met the late WA haiku poet, Nicholas Barwell, in 2005 and there began years of discussions about haiku and my first attempts at writing haiku. Following this, I was fortunate to be offered, and to complete, an intense mentorship (writing, researching, critiquing and workshopping of haiku for publication) with mentor, John Bird, in 2007. I am so grateful to both of these people for the excellent grounding they gave me in haiku and the development of my love for haiku.

Since then, and after much research and experience, I have learned that haiku can be so much more than a form of poetry. It can also be a lifestyle, a healing tool, and a tool for environmental activism. Continue reading “The Healing Power of Haiku: Maureen Sexton”

Why Haiku? : Lorin Ford

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photo: Lyn Reeves

 

Why not free verse, sonnets or ghazals? (I‘ve written some). Or bush ballads? (I love horses).

My involvement with haiku started with an unexpected discovery in 2004. Carla Sari read out a haiku by Dhugal Lindsay:


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpicking up a jellyfish . . .
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmy lifeline
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxclear and deep

I was immediately transported to my early childhood on the beach at Seaford, holding a moon jellyfish from the shallows (they’re non-stingers) in the palm of my hand, where it became a shining lens. In this first ‘aha moment’ it seemed to me that a haiku could be a lens which, focusing on a detail or two, could evoke an entire scenario and mood, an experience of participation rather than a story told. Continue reading “Why Haiku? : Lorin Ford”

My Writing Practice: Dawn Bruce

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photo: Lyn Reeves

The discipline of haiku guides me to appreciate the ‘now’ of my day. How wonderful it is to jot down images and tiny events that show the extraordinary in the ordinary.

My haiku are not made up of seventeen syllables but usually far fewer. However, I try to keep to the short/long/short format unless I feel the haiku should be a one-liner. I have also written a few two-liners when that is the way they fell.

Though I often use the visual sense in my haiku I also try to catch the other senses of sound, taste, smell and touch. The seasons are used to good effect in most haiku and I too follow this course. I find now I’m older many of my haiku use the autumn season to express thoughts and moments.

The core of the haiku is that light touch and simplicity which shines on the spirit of the poem…that certain something that is almost impossible to explain…maybe wabi sabi.

My favourite haiku is the text of a sensitive haiga by Ron Moss. I admire its lightness and achingly beautiful simplicity: Continue reading “My Writing Practice: Dawn Bruce”

The Wonder of Haiku: Quendryth Young

Screen Shot 2017-10-19 at 9.55.35 pm_2I write haiku because I must. Since childhood there has been a progression through scribbled jingles, ballads, bush verse and free verse, until I discovered haiku.

This is how it happened: in 2004 I won a voucher in the Lismore City Council’s writing competition which I exchanged for my choice at a local bookstore. Among volumes about mysticism, charms and crystals I came upon Haiku, Ancient and Modern, compiled by Jackie Hardy. Within its pages is a haiku by Elizabeth St Jacques that entranced me.

first snow
the neglected yard
now perfect

Continue reading “The Wonder of Haiku: Quendryth Young”

A Grain of Sand: Simon Hanson

cropped and resizedThe Oneness of all things embraces ideas and insights that I cherish. A fan of science and philosophy, I have been irresistibly drawn in recent years to haiku, one of the briefest of all art forms. I admire its attempt to touch on moments of connection in as few words as possible, and those words plain and simple at that. Although, as we know, the subtleties of haiku are elusive, and I am likely to continue along its way as a student for a while yet.

Though in awe of the immensities of space and time, I also love the details and intricacies of nature. The happenings inside tiny spaces never cease to amaze me and I am often struck by the wonder of ordinary things.

over the dunes
moonrise
in a grain of sand

Continue reading “A Grain of Sand: Simon Hanson”

Haiku Reflection: Lynette Arden

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photo: Lyn Reeves

I started writing haiku after taking part in a training course with the World Haiku Club in 2003. The form had appealed to me since buying a book by Harold G Henderson: An Introduction to Haiku in the 1960s. I also came across the poet Emily Dickinson at that time and found her short, highly concentrated poems immensely appealing. To be able to express so much in so few words. This seemed the greatest art.

I often write haiku after a walk somewhere. I find it handy to always carry a piece of paper to jot notes or even to write electronically on my smart phone. At other times a prompt may inspire me. I tend to scribble in my notebook and leave the work, then go back and either hone a haiku or abandon it. A few haiku have struggled on for years before completion. The idea has been sketched, but the words are not precise enough. To me the words of a haiku need to induce an emotion beyond logical thought and mere imagery.

white haired audience
the last violin notes
linger on

FreeXpression February 2007, Gathering 2008

Lynette Arden 2017