HAIKU DIALOGUE – World of Animals – (Put Me in the Zoo)

World of Animals with Guest Editor Nancy Brady

As a child, all I wanted to do was learn to read, and I couldn’t wait for first grade because that was when reading was taught. Unfortunately, my younger sister didn’t appreciate the fact that I’d rather read my book when she’d rather play outside so she’d hide it. We’d play, but I finally had a work-around for missing books. I’d randomly choose a volume from our family’s Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia. At the time I just thought I was the weird kid. In retrospect, I suspect I wasn’t the only one who spent time with random volumes of encyclopedias. Regardless, I discovered all sorts of things including my favorites:  animals.

Whether it was learning about wombats (still my favorite marsupial) or another kind of animal, I found (and find) the natural world fascinating.  Even now, I find myself watching Nature on PBS as they present programs featuring all sorts of animals, from the smallest to the largest and often those that are being rehabilitated or are in danger of becoming extinct. This brings me to the subject of the next couple of prompts – I am looking for haiku about animals of all kinds, from invertebrates to vertebrates. Each prompt will have a particular focus. Please join me in exploring the zoological world.

For inspiration, listen to They Might Be Giants’ “Mammal”.

Prompt: (Put Me in the Zoo)

I was five the first time I went to the Columbus Zoo with my parents and sisters. I was excited to see all the animals the zoo had. Looking at and reading about them are two very different things. Books, while informative, do not have the same reality as seeing fur and fins up close and personal (well, as close as one can get with bars and enclosures between you and the animal within). I remember being particularly impressed with the monkeys running around on a rocky enclosure, and this occurred long before I discovered wombats in the encyclopedia. Even then, I loved the diversity of all the animals in the world, and the zoo was often the only place to see lions, tigers, rhinos, and other endangered creatures. (Of course, at the time I never considered all of the diversity back then; I was just thrilled to see the different animals.)  Zoos still help with keeping our planet filled with all these species, often bringing them back from the edge of extinction.

This brings me to this week’s prompt of writing haiku about the more exotic and distinctive animals of the world. The world is full of such unique animals, and I’d like to learn more about them. If you visited the zoo as a child, what animal did you most want to see? Which animal intrigued or fascinated you the most? Did you get to see that animal?  If you haven’t, what do you imagine that first experience seeing it would be like? I know I am still hoping to see a wombat someday.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday, March 21, 2026.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) In the Poem box, with your poem(s), please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

Join us next week for Nancy’s selection of poems on the topic (Put Me in the Zoo)…

Bios:

Guest Editor Nancy Brady is a pharmacist by profession, a haiku and senryu poet by nature. She often found inspiration on her treks back and forth to work as a pharmacist; her first book of haiku, Ohayo Haiku, was a foray into publishing haiku. Three Breaths, her second book, is a mix of haiku, senryu, alternative forms, and other poems. Her work has appeared in journals all over the globe (both print and electronic) and has been rejected by many more. Nancy also writes other genres and has published a children’s book, The Adventures of Aloysius, in November 2023. It is catalogued in the Library of Congress. She also reads lots of novels. Her favorite is, and remains, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but she is also a big Harry Potter fan. Now retired from the pharmacy profession, she works part-time for the local Board of Elections and volunteers at Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Center. She, her husband Rob, and their cat, Regulus Arcturus Black, live in Huron, Ohio, a block from Lake Erie, where the bird population is constantly changing.

Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Photo Credits:

Banner Photo & Prompt Photo credits:  Rob Smith

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week. Read past Haiku Dialogue posts here.