Australian Haiku Society

Responses ranged from formal, descriptive definitions to abstract expressions. I found the latter at least equally interesting and instructive. I won’t try to paraphrase them – it’s best they be (re)read in the authors’ own words.

But looking to the definitive answers, some analysis is possible. The near-universal view was that a haiku is a poem whose most distinguishing feature is brevity.

It seems we insist that our haiku is poetry despite daily-published ‘haiku’ that might persuade others to a contrary view. Is it that we don’t wish to be known as writers of anything less than poetry? I wonder if this mind-set encourages a striving for ‘depth’ or ‘intellectual significance’ or ‘semantic complexity’ that might make an older Bashõ uncomfortable. What happens to haiku when stressed to measure up to its bigger cousins?

Brevity. We are agreed the haiku is: small, short, concise, a snapshot, brief as a synaptic flash, a molecule of poetry, an atom! Nobody suggested that it should, like its Japanese parent, have a minimum length.

(1) “Haiku are poems modelled on the seventeen-syllable three-line poems of the ancient Japanese. Being poems, haiku are a form of literature and may employ literary techniques and may be judged by literary standards. Generally speaking, haiku stir emotion and stimulate reflection in the reader through simple precise objective depictions of things in nature.”

(2)
“Haiku are pebbles
poets lob into the pond
of our emotions.”

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Jack Prewitt (Serelemar, NSW)

‘Haiku are the little poems I write and call haiku.’

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Lynette Arden (Adelaide, SA)

‘haiku are small and humble poems that depict the everyday world around us, aiming to give a flash of insight into that world.’

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Earl Keener (Bethany, West Virginia)

“Haiku represents
the smallest atom of literature in which we might study
the heart beat of the muse. Haiku is verbal resonance
resulting from psychological projection. It is the literary equivalent of the Shinto experience of the kami.”

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Susan Murphy (Sydney, NSW)

‘Nothing is ordinary and to notice it without intruding, saying only what’s needed, quite naturally touches eternity.’

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Beverley George (Pearl Beach, NSW) endorses John Bird’s description:

‘A haiku is a brief poem, built on sensory images from the environment. It evokes an insight into our world and its peoples.’

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This is the final publication of responses to What is haiku? Next week I’ll briefly review what we have shared over the past five months. John Bird, for the AHS Definitions Project.