Haiku for Healing – Google Classroom Update

Haiku for Healing is an initiative of The Haiku Foundation (THF) examining the therapeutic potentials and benefits of haiku. An integral feature is this free 2-months Google Classroom organised by Geethanjali Rajan, distinguished haiku poet and editor. It’s not a clinical course in poetry therapy but borne out of Geethanjali’s own personal research and use of the latent restorative possibilities of this short form.

Here is Geethanjali’s update on the course:

We are more than halfway through the Google Classroom course which is being conducted as part of Haiku for Healing (H4H). The ten places for this course were rapidly filled.  After a few days of getting used to the Google Classroom asynchronous format the ten participants have been enthusiastically reading, absorbing, ideating and writing. The exchanges have been insightful and interesting. The participants are a mixed group with varied levels of experience with haiku (from reading haiku for the first time to writing haiku for a few decades) but with an interest in placing haiku in the healing toolkit.

In our fifth week now, the participants started the journey by closely reading and connecting to haiku and commenting on the experience.

winter fog
a crow stumbles through
a broken song

John Hawkhead, UK *1

The reading list was enriched by the poems that I selected from cattails, where, as the haiku editor, I have been fortunate to read works from around the world. The poets whose poems feature here kindly gave permission for use in this class. These poems are examples of writing that embodies close observation, mindfulness and honest articulation of a moment.

nurses move her
to a private room . . .
blackthorn winter

Debbie Strange, Canada *2

The poems for the list were curated to represent a wide range of emotions and experiences.

old journal
blank pages after
the self-discovery

Bhawana Rathore, India *3

After this activity, the poets have been reading and commenting on articles on haiku as well as on healing, deepening their understanding of the power of haiku as a healing tool. Of particular interest to all of us have been the articles in Haiku for Parkinson’s, interviews in Haiku for Healing and the New to Haiku series at The Haiku Foundation.

Towards the beginning of the course, the poets were invited to mindfully observe moments that they connected with and pen phrases, following which we are now in the process of actually writing haiku that has significance to each of us in our healing journey. Poets will also edit their own haiku and later, connect and comment with other poets’ haiku in the group.

It has been an enriching learning experience for me, and a humbling one, to have participants who have trusted the process and shared with me their journey through healing, moment by moment.

Gratitude,

Geethanjali Rajan

Notes

*1. cattails, April 2021

*2. cattails, April 2025

*3. cattails, October 2023

If you have any questions about Haiku for Healing, please use the Haiku for Healing contact form on our Contact page.

Bios:

Geethanjali Rajan teaches Japanese and English in Chennai, India and started her haiku journey in 2003. She edits haiku at the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails, and is on the editorial team of Café Haiku. She is the author of a book of haikai poetry longing for sun longing for rain (Red River, 2023) and the co-author of Unexpected Gift with Sonam Chhoki, Bhutan (Éditions des petits nuages, Canada, 2021).

She was on the panel of judges in the South Asia Online Haiku Contest for The Japan Foundation (Japanese language haiku) in 2021 and 2022. She has conducted over 60 haiku workshops in schools, colleges and other fora, spreading the joy of the ancient Japanese poetry form in India. Her poetry can be sampled here and here.

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short-form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan’s non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails.

Her chapbook of haibun, The Lure of the Threshold was published in May 2021. Mapping Absences, a collaboration of haibun, tan bun and tanka prose with Mike Montreuil was published in 2019. Another collaboration with Geethanjali Rajan: Unexpected Gift was published in November 2021. She organised a year-long email course in 2024 for The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku for Parkinson’s project.

Read past Haiku for Healing posts here.

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