Haiku in English

Many Japanese haiku are structured around the number of phonetic units known as on, with a three-phrase format in which 17 on are distributed in a 5–7–5 pattern (5 on in the first phrase, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third).[2] This has prompted an idea that English-language haiku should adopt a similar structure in which syllables are arranged across three lines in a 5–7–5 structure. Linguists, however, note two on often form a single syllable and that a 17-on phrase is, on average, about 12 syllables.[2][9] Consequently, many contemporary English-language haiku poets work in forms of 10 to 14 syllables.[10][11][12]

In Britain, the editors of The Academy announced the first known English-language haikai contest on April 8, 1899, shortly after the publication of William George Aston's History of Japanese Literature.[13] The contest, number 27 of the magazine's ongoing series, drew dozens of entries,[14] and the prize was awarded to R. M. Hansard:

The west wind whispered,
And touched the eyelids of spring:
Her eyes, Primroses.

The Academy contest inspired other experimentation with the format. Bertram Dobell published more than a dozen haikai in a 1901 verse collection, and in 1903 a group of Cambridge poets, citing Dobell as precedent, published their haikai series, "The Water Party."[15] The Academy's influence was felt as far away as Australia, where editor Alfred Stephens was inspired to conduct a similar contest in the pages of The Bulletin. The prize for this (possibly first Australian) haiku contest went to Robert Crawford.[16]

In the United States, Yone Noguchi published "A Proposal to American Poets," in The Reader Magazine in February 1904, giving a brief outline of his own English hokku efforts and ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets! You say far too much, I should say."[17]

Ezra Pound's influential haiku-influenced poem, "In a Station of the Metro", published in 1913, has been widely regarded as a watershed moment in the establishment of English-language haiku as a literary form.[18]

During the Imagist period, a number of mainstream poets, including Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington, and Lewis Grandison Alexander, published what were generally called hokku. Their efforts were actively encouraged by Noguchi, who published his own volume of English-language Japanese Hokkus in 1920.[19]

In the Beat period, original haiku were composed by Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Richard Wright and James W. Hackett. Wright composed some 4,000 haiku (mostly with 5-7-5 syllabic structure).[20]

Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.

— Richard Wright, collected in Haiku: This Other World, 1998

The first English-language haiku group in America, founded in 1956, was the Writers' Roundtable of Los Altos, California, under the direction of Helen Stiles Chenoweth.[21] The Haiku Society of America was founded in 1968 and began publishing its journal Frogpond in 1978.

In 1963 the journal American Haiku was founded in Platteville, Wisconsin, edited by the European-Americans James Bull and Donald Eulert. Among contributors to the first issue were poets James W. Hackett, O Mabson Southard, and Nick Virgilio. In the second issue of American Haiku Virgilio published his "lily" and "bass" haiku, which became models of brevity, breaking the conventional 5-7-5 syllabic form, and pointing toward the leaner conception of haiku that would take hold in subsequent decades.

American Haiku ended publication in 1968 and was succeeded by Modern Haiku in 1969. Other early publications include Chenoweth's 1966 anthology Borrowed Water, featuring the work by the Los Altos Writers' Roundtable, and journals Haiku Highlights, founded 1965 by European-American writer Jean Calkins and later taken over by Lorraine Ellis Harr; Eric Amann's Haiku, founded 1967; and Leroy Kanterman's Haiku West founded 1967.

The first Haiku North America conference was held at Las Positas College in Livermore, California, in 1991, and has been held on alternating years since then. The American Haiku Archives, the largest public archive of haiku-related material outside Japan, was founded in 1996. It is housed at the California State Library in Sacramento, California, and includes the official archives of the Haiku Society of America.

Significant contributors to American haiku have included Lee Gurga, Jim Kacian, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Raymond Roseliep, Marlene Mountain, Alan Pizzarelli, Alexis Rotella, George Swede, and Michael Dylan Welch.

The most common variation from the three-line standard is one line, sometimes called a monoku. It emerged from being more than an occasional exception during the late 1970s.[22] The one-line form, based on an analogy with the one-line vertical column in which Japanese haiku are often printed, was lent legitimacy principally by three people:[22]

• Marlene Mountain was one of the first English-language haiku poets to write haiku regularly in a single horizontal line.
• Hiroaki Sato translated Japanese haiku into one line in English.
• Matsuo Allard wrote essays in its favor and published several magazines and chapbooks devoted to the form, in addition to practicing it.

The single-line haiku usually contains fewer than seventeen syllables. A caesura (pause) may be appropriate, dictated by sense or speech rhythm (following the Japanese tradition of a break, marked by the Kireji[23]), and usually little or no punctuation.[24] This form was used by John Wills and, more recently, has been practiced by poets such as M. Kettner, Janice Bostok, Jim Kacian, Chris Gordon, Eve Luckring, Scott Metz, Stuart Quine, John Barlow, and many others.

an icicle the moon drifting through it

— Matsuo Allard, Bird Day Afternoon, High/Coo Press, 1978

The one-line form can create a variety of ambiguities allowing for multiple readings of the same haiku. A variation of the format breaks the line at the caesura or pause.[25]

A single word may occasionally be claimed to be a haiku:

tundra

— Cor van den Heuvel, the window-washer's pail, 1963[26] (printed alone on an otherwise blank page)

Haiku of four lines (sometimes known as haiqua)[27] or longer have been written, some of them "vertical haiku" with only a word or two per line, mimicking the vertical printed form of Japanese haiku.

beneath
leaf mold
stone
cool
stone

— Marlene Wills, the old tin roof, 1976

Haiku have also appeared in circular form (sometimes known as cirku)[27] whereby the poem has no fixed start or end point.

In the "zip" form developed by John Carley, a haiku of 15 syllables is presented over two lines, each of which contains one internal caesura represented by a double space.[28][29]

— John Carley, Magma No 19, 2001

A fixed-form 5-3-5 syllable (or 3-5-3 word) haiku is sometimes known as a lune.[30][31]

• Global Haiku. Eds. George Swede and Randy Brooks. IRON Press, 2000.
• Haiku 21. Eds. Lee Gurga and Scott Metz. Modern Haiku Press, 2011.
• The Haiku Anthology. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. Anchor Books, 1974
• The Haiku Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. Simon & Schuster, 1986.
• The Haiku Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Cor van den Heuvel. W.W. Norton, 1999.
• Haiku in English. Eds. Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns. W.W. Norton, 2013.
• Haiku Moment. Ed. Bruce Ross. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1993.
• The San Francisco Haiku Anthology. Eds. Jerry Ball, Garry Gay, and Tom Tico. Smythe-Waithe Press, 1992.
• The Unswept Path. Eds. John Brandi and Dennis Maloney. White Pine Press, 2005.
• Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku. Ed. Allan Burns. Snapshot Press, 2013.

• A Guide to Haiku Publications, 2008 from HSA

• American Haiku Archives

• Jane Reichhold on haiku techniques
• English Haiku : A Composite View on the British Haiku Society website
• Haiku Chronicles – a free educational podcast designed to provide a better understanding and appreciation of the art of haiku and its related forms.
• "In The Moonlight a Worm..." - an educational site on haiku writing techniques.