Thank you for reading. Getting responses like yours are the greatest gift a creative person can get.
There are haiku, haibun, and haiga. There is also something called renga, and another poem type called senryu.
The ku in haiku could be translated into phrase, and the bun in haibun means something more like sentence/prose, and the ga in haiga means image, so it’s a haiku poem paired with an image. Traditionally these images would have been ink washes or drawings but these days the image can be a photograph or anything else. It’s a pretty broad and open art form actually, haiku.
The difference between haiku and senryu, which is sometimes easy to spot and sometimes not, is that haiku are more focused on nature while senryu are more focused on human experience. Honestly, I don’t feel that I can truly make the distinction myself, but some people are quite confident in their ability to tell you if a poem is haiku or senryu.
I like to leave those distinctions to others and just keep writing poems that I hope are interesting.
Very interesting! It's wonderful to read creatives who challenge themselves to try something new. I think the key is to put yourself on the page. Human vulnerability, experience, thoughts, and emotions are all relatable. You present them in a magical way. You have now given me more reading and research to do. By the way, this is samsmith1971 curating Hive Creatives for The Ink Well. Have a lovely weekend, @boxcarblue
Thanks, Sam. It’s funny that you mention putting yourself on the page. After letting it sit on my shelf for sixteen years, I started working with “The Artist’s Way” at the start of the new year. That book mentions something similar: showing up at the page.
Doing the work, day in and day out, and letting yourself be you, both are important.
After three years of mostly writing daily haiku, I’ve found that any subject is worthy of being put on the page. I think that might be one of the biggest takeaways I’ve gotten from this daily practice and writing form. It’s been very freeing.