POETRY LAUNCH
A delicate touch
Alison Chisholm launches WM’s Haiku Competition by unravelling the short poetic form
Alison Chisholm
Poetry is universal. It is read and written all over the world. One of the joys of exploring it is the fact that you can try the patterns that have been devised across the globe and across the centuries, write them in your own language, and so place yourself in touch with other cultures and other poets everywhere.
One of the world’s most popular forms of syllabic poetry originated in Japan. In the thirteenth century, the collaborative renga, a sequence of short poems, opened with a hokku. This was a special stanza, and it was considered an honour to be invited to construct one to start the chain of the renga. In the second half of the seventeenth century, a number of poets, of whom Matsuo Bashō is the most famous, isolated the opening lines as a stand alone poem, the haiku. A haiku, traditionally untitled, but headed Haiku, creates its poetic effect in just a few syllables, without using rhyme and metre to cement its message. In fact, it’s so brief that the inclusion of rhyme and metre would trespass on the delicacy of its construction.