Haiku for Healing

Haiku for Healing – Haiga as a Healing Practice

Week 1 photo prompt

This series of 6 photo prompts features the photographs of the well-known haiga poet, and editor, Lavana Kray. A photo prompt is posted each Monday starting on Monday, 9th February 2026. This is the second part of the Haiga as a Healing Practice feature of H4H, which looks to explore the healing potentials of haiga, a poetic form related to haiku, in dealing with illness, bereavement, estrangement, displacement, isolation and loneliness.

The experience and perspective of a poet is unique and we want to showcase this singular voice. Thus, the individual photo prompt has no title or accompanying text.

Take a cue from Lavana’s inspirational interview and consider how does the image distil the “residues” of your experience? Does it bring to mind the yearning in William Blake’s “winged life”* with its lightness of joy and release or does it evoke what Thomas Hardy described as the “the sorriness underlying the grandest things”?** Look inside and outside yourself Lavana urges and find that “something” that will best convey what you want to say.

In the Comments box below, please post no more than two original, unpublished haiku or senryu inspired by the photo on the theme of healing. In the spirit of empathy and connection we request that you comment on the other poems posted here.

 

 

Notes

*  “Eternity”, William Blake (1757-1827)
** Notebook entry for 19 April 1885, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

Sonam Chhoki

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

Bios

Lavana Kray is from Romania. Over the years, she has won various prizes in haiku and tanka competitions. The World Haiku Association awarded her the title of Master Haiga Artist. Her work has appeared in many print and online publications, as well as in Haiga Exhibitions organized by the World Haiku Association in Japan and Italy.  The Laval Literary Society from Canada awarded her the André-Jacob-Entrevous Prize 2023, for a literary text (haiku) combined with an artistic visual. She currently serves as haiga editor for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails. She has published five photo-haiku books, one tankart collection and a photo-haibun book.

She is owner-editor of https://ourbesthaiga.blogspot.com/
https://thehaikufoundation.org/thf-galleries-photo-haiku-of-lavana-kray/

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.

THF strives to maintain a safe and friendly environment for our readers and site participants. Participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior of all parties. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason, at any time.

If you see something you feel may violate our Code of Conduct, please report it to the appropriate moderator or the President here.

 

Sonam Chhoki

Comments (66)

  2. still no spring
    two of us and one chair
    between us

    winter darkness
    but a few chairs herald
    a change

      1. Thank you, Lavana, for your appreciation. I admire others for their subtlety, which I still lack.

  4. 1
    bench in the shade –
    the jagged edge
    of that photo

    2
    do you remember
    that scent of lime trees…
    where were we?

  5. prayer meeting
    the echo of silence
    breathes

    winter chill
    the snow-white sari
    gathering her grief

    Lakshmi Iyer
    India

  6. shying away
    from the spotlight
    the girl and her shadow

    still trees
    in the dark night
    thoughts screaming

    2. revision (tighter, less repetition of the image, feels less like a caption)

      moonlight
      the unopened
      lab report

  11. the softening
    of winter bells
    carrying her home

    sharing a peg
    the mindfulness
    of spring chatter

    beside me
    on the hearth
    old friends in sepia

    family tree
    peeling an apple
    from the moonlit side

    Joanna Ashwell

  12. the smiles
    she’ll never forget —
    the flag-draped coffin

    graveside service…
    a minister waits
    for the family

    1. A wedding invitation kept for years for its importance in the family, and the browning of its edges reflects that it is too important to ever put in the bin OR those four names important since that was the last time the four were all together. Lots of possibilities in this haiku, Keith.

      1. Amend that, graduation, not wedding….but still the same impressions. Sorry, Keith. I’d blame it on Otto Correct, but it is my mustake.

  19. still shrouded
    the secrets
    we never shared

    no encores
    the final stage
    she couldn’t conquer

    1. Hi Anne-Marie,

      Your response to Lavana’s evocative photo has a cadence that comes across even to a non-French speaking person like myself. It’s almost like a sigh.

      Not to be daunted by my lack of French, l requested Mike Montreuil, who writes and translates French poetry into English.

      He says it’s a powerful poem of loss and here is his translation:

      empty spaces
      my gaze never tires
      of imagining you

      Translated by Mike Montreuil, Canada

      Thank you for sharing this poignant poem.

      Sonam

  23. 1
    curtain up…
    the fireflies put on
    a free show

    2
    silent space
    my teasing thoughts
    in syllables

    1. A quiet space and a few thoughts in three syllables—three chairs—why not. An ingenious interpretation of the photograph. I like poems that give the reader time to think. Congratulations, Raji!

      1. Thank you, Lavana, for this wonderful response and such a pleasure to read your take on it too!

  26. in the spotlight
    stiff white sheets
    engulf me

    my favorite chair
    soft indentations
    a warm embrace

  28. Forgive me if I seem a bit thin-skinned, but l don’t think a public forum is the place to try to “improve ” another person’s haiku/senryu. Yo remember what Mom said.

    1. You capture the vastness of emptiness that this photo evokes and created a truly poignant poem, Michele.

    2. A minimalist and moving poem, in the spirit of haiku. I would gladly sign it as my own. Congratulations!

    3. So poignant. Reminds us all of those we’ve lost. Especially when you reach my age.😉

    1. This gave me the shivers. I spend a lot of time in hospitals wondering about late night noises in the hall. Now I know.

    3. Your decision to use ‘for the dead of night’ instead of ‘in the dead of night’ really is a discomforting surprise that elevates the poem, John.

  31. Crossed legs dirt, grass burn
    Staining, your stars laughing dares
    Empty slates taunting

    Plastic covers sooth
    brokenness, despair made clean
    rejecting your dirt

  32. moment of silence
    for the students
    who could not attend

    with the last
    shovel of dirt
    mourners leave for home

    1. Hi Christopher

      In the first one, I would remove ‘the’ from the middle line. That gets you a kireji break at the end of line one and establishes a little surprise in the third line. A good match with the image.

    2. Suggestive and emotional poems. Perfectly matching the image without describing it, just adding something the author imagined about these three white chairs. Congratulations!
      Lavana

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