Haiku of the Day Theme for April 2025: Food
Our guest editor for this month is Sue Courtney of New Zealand.
Sue writes:
“Let me take you on a culinary journey from dawn until after dusk as I share with you some of the food haiku poems I have collected, many of them with a sensory ingredient.
To background my selections, in August 2024 I presented a session on food haiku for an online conference, Haiku Down Under 2024. My session name was ‘kai-ku’, kai being the Maori word for food. As I particularly wanted to highlight sensory food haiku related to Down Under, I spent many enjoyable hours reading through four New Zealand haiku anthologies on my bookshelf, back issues of the recently digitised Kokako journal (NZ), Echidna Tracks and Creatrix (Australia), and other online journals. I quickly realised not many haiku poets write about food, and even fewer write about food in a sensory way.
For Haiku of the Day for April 2025, I’ve chosen poems from my Haiku Down Under research, the resulting A Sensory Journey: Haiku Down Under Anthology 2024, a newer edition of Kokako, and the relatively new haiku journal LEAF. Plus some of my favourite food haiku I just had to share.
Please enjoy my selections.”
Sue Courtney.
Orewa, New Zealand
The Haiku of the Day feature displays a new haiku each day at the top of our home page. See also our Haiku of the Day Archive.
Comments (10)
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Absolutely chaming, Kala! And it brought back some really happy memories: I worked in a baker’s shop in between school and university, and I absolutely loved it. I got to know all the regular customers, and my boss, and fellow assistants were all really nice people. It was a half hour walk to and from the shop, and I found it a pefect time for writing poetry in my head…
I really identified with this one, Adjei Agyei-Baah! Somewhere in an old photo album, is a black and white photo of me, aged about 2, with nothing on but a nappy, holding a huge mango in both hands, completely covered with juice! 😋
Love this, Cindy! Your poem remdned me of that bit in ‘Little House in the Big Woods’, when they dribble maple syrup in the snow; and maple syrup and bacon, on pancakes, waffles or French toast, is one of my absolute favourite breakfasts!
It’s wonderful that you are taking us down food haiku journey, Sue. Actually, I am surprised that food’s sensory quality has been overlooked in haiku. It’s definitely full of sensory experience, while being part of our cultural backgrounds and traditions.
Looking forward to all that you’ve discovered in your research and hoping it will generate more interest in the haiku poets’ world!
This is great idea Sue. A lovely tribute to Kai! From the perspective of a Kiwi, Lorraine’s sensory haiku takes me back to our beloved ‘White lady.’The iconic mobile Diner. In the early hours after a concert the smell of bacon burgers pervaded the city streets.
I am not certain, is this where we are posting daily Haiku? This is my first attempt at trying this form of writing and submission, Haiku. If not here, where does I post the 2 Haiku that I have written and posted here?
Sincerely,
Dorna Hainds
FOOD —
sliced lemons
hits my rumbling stomach…
sunshine rays
Dorna Hainds
Michigan, USA
the setting place
for the burnt sunset…
plated orange
Dorna Hainds
Michigan, USA
Dorna, Haiku of the Day is not a feature you can submit to. It is a collection of poems for display curated by a guest editor, such as Sue Courtney, for this month. You can submit haiku to other features that you see in our blog, such as Haiku Dialogue and the Monthly Kukai.
Great concept, Sue, and I love this poem by Lorraine, as bacon is one of my favourite food smells! I once (to my horror!) “deconverted” a vegetarian boyfriend, when I was cooking bacon, and he came rushing into the kitchen, saying “I can’t stand it! I have to have some!” And he literally grabbed the bacon from the pan, and gobbled it up! We’re still good friends, though!
‘Deconverted’. That’s funny Jenny. The scent of bacon is like the scent of sizzling onions and other foods I’m sure I’m a sucker for the scent of bacon and though I don’t eat onions due to an allergy – I still love the smell from a fund raising stall. Distilling it all down into a memorable haiku, like Lorraine’s, is the hard part.
dawn stars
the scent of bacon
from a roadhouse
—Lorraine Haig, first published in Echidna Tracks 12, 2024
I’m right there on that journey with her and anticipating my breakfast when I get there.
Oh, you poor thing, Sue! I love onions!