What do you read to write haiku? Where do you get your inspiration?

[Rich Schilling]

The forum seems kind of dead so I was just curious what everyone reads to get in the mood to write haiku? Before I started writing haiku I used to read mostly fiction and music bios, but since writing/publishing haiku I read mostly haiku. I'm thinking lately I need to widen my reading to open up my haiku so it doesn't become to formulaic.

[AlanSummers]

Hi Rich,

The forum seems kind of dead so I was just curious what everyone reads to get in the mood to write haiku? Before I started writing haiku I used to read mostly fiction and music bios, but since writing/publishing haiku I read mostly haiku. I'm thinking lately I need to widen my reading to open up my haiku so it doesn't become to formulaic.

I must admit it seems such a shame that only one section appears to be active when there are so many other parts on this 'side' of the THF website.

You asked:
I was just curious what everyone reads to get in the mood to write haiku?

In the past when I suffered long bouts of block I'd go to Mark Holloway's blog "Beachcombing for the Landlocked" which I'd access on a smartphone while at train stations. He seemed particularly fresh and original and it gave me a boost.

I don't specifically require anything to write haiku, but of course I will read unrelated books as much as related books, and pull from television or streaming video etc...

This was from watching a film on television:


vigilante movie
my elbow
heavy on your knee

Alan Summers
Publication credit: Symmetry Pebbles ed. Richard Thomas (2011)

Anthology credit:
The Humours of Haiku ed. David Cobb (Iron Press 2012)
Collection credit: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

Jodie Foster movie film The Brave One (2007 film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brave_One_(2007_film)


And this from reading Edgar Rice Burroughs as a youngster, and watching the two adapted movies:


the long summer
re-imagining myself
as John Carter

Alan Summers
Podcast/shownotes: Series 2 Episode 8: Filmku (2019)


Along with my ongoing giallo/yellow series is my Edward Hopper series incl. Nighthawks:
https://proletaria.org/2019/07/04/three-monostichs-by-alan-summers/

Then there is Sylvia Plath and Claude Monet:
https://www.humankindjournal.org/contrib_alan_summers/issue-16-alan-summers


So I "read" everything whether books, films, drama series, paintings, poetry, café situations, train stations.

I also created Slip Realism which is a way of reading:

Slip-Realism - haiku about lives and incidents on the 'peripheral' -Unearthing the anonymous - parallel narratives - new ways of perceiving the real (after Néoréalisme & Nouveau realisme):
https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/01/slip-realism-haiku-about-lives-and.html

At night to rest from thinking about haiku almost all day, I go back to giallo (crime fiction) to switch off, but even then I create giallo haibun from time to time.


You said:
I'm thinking lately I need to widen my reading to open up my haiku so it doesn't become to formulaic.

We need to devour everything, and push ourselves to devour everything, and know more than we should, to keep our haiku fresh and original, and not fall into the template trap.

Your unintentional typo is actually a useful statement:
"become to formulaic" which could be read as "succumb to formulaic [practices]

We don't want to find ourselves writing haiku in such a way that it becomes and goes "to formulaic" and that's easily done to appease readers and fellow poets, and editors, and contest judges, and social media likes and garnering 'nice'.

So we need to lose ourselves occasionally 'outside the box' without string or breadcrumbs to guide us back, as 'back' might be formulaic.

I actually watch a lot of musical bios and the classic album series that both Sky and BBC produce and learn a lot about haiku as much as I do about the music.

Alan Summers
Call of the Page

[flowerfox]

Hi Rich

When I'm looking for inspiration, apart from haiku books and the related forms, I tend to head for books of nature writing, some delightful descriptions of the natural world, also about artists, one of my favourite reads, the correspondence between Vincent van Gogh and his brother, Theo.

[Jorlando]

Howdy;

Whenever I start preparing to write haiku I tend to read essays on the form; Grace cuts is a good site for this (http://www.graceguts.com/haiku-and-senryu)

Also try reading some stuff surrounding the mindset that helped arrive at haiku, such as books on zen or Japanese aesthetics and history.

Article on Japanese aesthetics:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/

A interesting short read is in praise of shadows, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Shadows)
I have a copy of the ebook if you'd like me to send it to you

This book is also interesting its an intro to zen Buddhism
(https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/introduction-to-zen.pdf)

Alternatively engage in activities that get the creative juices flowing in a haiku like direction:
meditating, driving about in silence, walks, etc...

Some western poets you might want to check out are Frank O'Hara and William Carlos Williams both of these writers pen many good pieces from a more object orientated stand point.

Thanks for your time!
- Justin

[XYZ]

When I started writing haiku, I referred to the list of kigo for inspiration. Then the Red Moon Press anthology Echoes inspired most of my haiku. Also I read online journals like The Heron's Nest. A practice I follow when I am feeling uninspired to write a haiku is to write the haiku from various platforms whether books, PDFs or online journals for which I feel most strongly in a diary. It ensures the required pause before getting ready to write while at the same time we don't feel unproductive for not being able to write something new. Also, I feel Russian poetry and short stories (especially Chekhov, Gogol and Turganev) have beautiful imagery to inspire a haiku.

[GRIX]

Hey Rich!

When I feel uninspired, I tend to look up new science news articles and then follow what I find into deeper research. I prefer to approach most of nature from this perspective, as I am a systems-oriented person but not an outdoorsy type. My end result may not always seem indicitive of the starting spot, but I'm okay with that.

Other things I do to find inspo are: read non-haiku poetry (tons of young and fresh poetry venues, easily found on Twitter), read classical literature, look at art online, research different cultural histories and events, and look up scientific databases. A couple I love are:

International Cloud Atlas   https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/descriptions-of-clouds.html
European Space Agency photo gallery  https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images

Robin

[Lorraine Pester]

Rich,

For stunning imagery, I enjoy reading the books by John Muir. He travelled all over the southwest, wrote what he saw, was a leader of the conservation group for Yosemite, Alaska land management. He was a contemporary of Ansel Adams and the F64 group if you like to look at photography for inspiration.

If you have a Kindle or an iPad that has Kindle or another reader, John Muir's books are available for $0.00 at Amazon. Free is my kind of price for such inspiration as his   

Lorraine

[Robert Kingston]

I find not restricting myself to anything in particular allows the mind freedom to discover.
This said, if I have a dry spell, I tend to recite several of my favourite haiku / Senryu.
Choosing different beats / syllable counts can open the mind to current surroundings.

[Anna]

I read a lot from the THF online digital library,  and every printed word that comes my way,  a fast read if it is tiring or trite,  a slow read after the fast to internalize what I am garnering from the work,  I lost the capacity to just read,  after I began to write...
but most of all, it is the watchful mind or mindfulness as they call it ...every moment I am watching my own self,  not judging, mind you,  just watching... and since haiku is mostly an - in the moment thing,  it works ...try it

you have to read a lot to back up the watching, for the examples,the jux, the metaphors,  the parallels,  all have to come, and they cannot emerge without a large database in the mind ...so read anything and everything...

[Seaview (Marion Clarke)]

A lot of my haiku come from direct experience or memories of an experience that is somehow prompted by an event in the present, Rich. I therefore used notes facility on my phone to jot down ideas as they arrive. I’m not sure that a lot of what I write cones from reading (although I guess that everything we read gets filed in our head somewhere, whether we like it or not) As a visual artist, sometimes visiting an art exhibition works wonders for me in terms of inspiration, but a walk along the shores of Carlingford Lough around the corner from my home on the east coast of Ireland usually delivers. I read a lot of poetry (other than short form) and sometimes a particular image can trigger a haiku moment. For research purposes and to keep up to date with contemporary haiku I dip into the digital resources here in THF, like Anna, and read all the online journals from around the world. I like both fairly traditional and avant garde haiku.

[AlanSummers]

I love to write from direct experience and keep them as they are, without over-tampering. It's a thrill when an actual experience can go into a haiku relatively as it happened!

I am also influenced by art, colour, and history, and some aspects of this, plus a nod to two famous haiku poets, which about this piece called The After Party:
https://weirdlaburnum.wordpress.com/2019/09/15/the-after-party/


Poets are always influenced by other poets, and sometimes we want to acknowledge that in a poem. What better way than to add ‘after …’ as I’ve done here with two well-known haiku poets, as well as the artists Edward Hopper (‘Nighthawks’); and Michael Te Rakato Parekowhai’s He Korero Purakau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu: story of a New Zealand river: https://crosseyedpianist.com/2018/12/04/a-grand-artwork-is-a-comment-on-cultural-cross-currents/

warm regards,
Alan

p.s.

Basically, other than experiential work, I constantly explore and re-explore certain artists, certain themes.

[Janice Doppler]

For inspiration . . . Taking a walk in nature is the easiest source for me.  I carry a small notebook then stop and immediately jot ideas or draft haiku that jump into my mind.

Reading to write . . . Randomly read haiku from print and online sources.  I also read essays about writing and reading haiku.  A few days ago, I found a series of lessons by Tom Painting in the resources section of THF website.  The lesson on Lurking in Haiku struck me as a way of doing some structured reading of haiku.  I started a journal in which my intent is to select one haiku from a couple pages in a print haiku source then “lurk” with that on one, just one page in the journal each morning.  A fledgling practice that I expect to let me drill into what I like and that, in turn, will influence how I write.

[pottygok]

When I started writing haiku, I referred to the list of kigo for inspiration.

This was exactly what I was going to say! I think kigo are a great way to generate ideas about haiku, and sometimes I'll write half a dozen haiku with the same kigo before I find one that sticks.  I also find it interesting to look at how various translators approach the same kigo with different language. Sometimes one phrasing triggers something that another one didn't, so that's a good place to start, too.

I also think regional kigo are quite important, and would love to see more of those used in haiku. I wrote an essay about this a while back, but the idea of kigo focused on a particular region is really interesting and something that US authors should explore more.

[AlanSummers]

Hi Joshua,

The use of kigo, which I wrote an article as well, and just added a short postscript, is an incredible little technique. In Japan it might be very automatic, at times, and pulled/selected from a centralised kigo book (saijiki or kiyose) by a group leader. Regional kigo are slowly appearing again, and outside Japan, it makes sense to create our own.


More than one fold in the paper: Kire, kigo, and the vertical axis of meaning in haiku
https://area17.blogspot.com/2014/04/more-than-one-fold-in-paper-kire-kigo.html

I see you like zombies, and Karen and myself watch The Walking Dead, and Fear The Walking Dead TV/streaming video series! 


INHUMAN: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse
https://www.amazon.com/INHUMAN-Zombie-Apocalypse-Joshua-Gage/dp/1625904533


Here's a take on zombie watching, incredibly useful as a survival method during our covid-19 pandemic too!   

Mordre
https://weirdlaburnum.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/mordre/

Even though Britain (Wales, Scotland and England) is a small country, we also have a varied set of seasons and aspects of seasons, and of course Northern Ireland (part of the U.K.) and Eire will have their own unique seasons too!

Scotland has more words for snow, in reality, than the Inuit, or even Canada, I guess! 

I see where you are based that thanks to its Midwest location, Cleveland has all four seasons — fall, winter, spring and summer! 

Where can we access your essay?

And of course we have the oldest running non-Japanese haiku society on kigo:

Yuki Teikei (有季定型) Haiku Society
https://youngleaves.org/?page_id=936
https://youngleaves.org/?page_id=142
https://youngleaves.org/?page_id=105

Enjoy! 

warm regards,
Alan

When I started writing haiku, I referred to the list of kigo for inspiration.

This was exactly what I was going to say! I think kigo are a great way to generate ideas about haiku, and sometimes I'll write half a dozen haiku with the same kigo before I find one that sticks.  I also find it interesting to look at how various translators approach the same kigo with different language. Sometimes one phrasing triggers something that another one didn't, so that's a good place to start, too.

I also think regional kigo are quite important, and would love to see more of those used in haiku. I wrote an essay about this a while back, but the idea of kigo focused on a particular region is really interesting and something that US authors should explore more.

[Bluemountain]

Hello,

If I feel stuck and unable to write I generally do a combination of things as one method on its own doesn’t seem to work.

A productive haiku day for me involves getting outdoors for a walk or kayak, reading haiku and reminiscing about past experiences (not necessarily in that order). Reminiscing in particular has helped this year because the virus has limited opportunities to travel and socialise.