Writing Poems Inspired by Haiku
Haiku are the perfect icebreaker poems. They are easy to remember, they are approachable, short, and they are low-risk, because they are only seventeen syllables and three short lines, and even those requirements are flexible. Haiku are also a great starting point. I have written many poems that use a haiku as a title, or as a first line, or as a seventeen syllable sentence–what Allen Ginsberg called an American Sentence, and inside of prisons, that word ‘sentence’ carries a heavier meaning. The Poetry Foundation website has a great page dedicated to the haiku: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/haiku-or-hokku. If you are hesitant about getting started, use this simple model:
Even in ____________ (place or state of being)
hearing ___________ (be as specific as possible)
I long for ___________ (same as first line)
Even in Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoo cry,
I long for Kyoto. (Basho, translated by Robert Hass)
Even in Louisiana–
hearing the absence of a breeze,
I long for Louisiana.
Even in life,
hearing the laughter of others,
I long for life
Even in the cypress swamp,
Hearing the hoot of the owl,
I long for the sounds of my youth
This haiku is by the American writer Richard Wright and a line from a longer poem it inspired:
I am nobody. If I am the red sinking sun,
A red sinking autumn sun let every eye wonder and every lover love
took my name away and cling and sing