Haiku of the Day News

Intro to Haiku of the Day May 2026: Loosening the Shackles on Haiku

After early exuberance when anglophone poets took to haiku and senryu, exploring how to adapt ideas arising in Japanese culture and aesthetics to our language and to English poetics, lore has accumulated on how haiku and senryu in English must be written and what they should contain. As if standards or “best practice” should apply to haikai poetry as they would to book-keeping, fire drill, or wiring a domestic circuit board. The result is a self-reinforcing orthodoxy that in my view unnecessarily impoverishes the genre.

The overgrown ivy of conventions can obscure the essence or spirit of haiku. I think that they would be better seen not as “rules” but as the useful and often powerful techniques that they are—yet not the only ones; not indispensable; not in themselves defining haiku. There are many impeccable precedents that could—if we wish—free today’s anglophone haiku poets from some arbitrary, often pedantic, constraints. And thereby broaden our scope from the conveyor-belt of standardised verses and repetitive tropes that clog the journals, without abandoning the roots of the genre in hokku and haikai poetry. Indeed, drawing more widely on those roots.

This month looks at several of the supposed no-nos. It will contain:

-a week of verses with three parts or elements in them: an arrangement of separate but related things;

-a week of verses that are basically single sentences (some ichibutsujitate-“tailored to one theme” or ichimonojitate-“tailored to one thing”). Several without a marked or semantic cut but nevertheless with a subtle juxtaposition or arrangement of separate elements;

-a week of musical rhyming verses;

-a week of insightful (aha!) verses that comprise statements, often didactic or epigrammatic;

-and the last three days of verses in the past tense.

Some of these examples defy more than one modern anglophone convention. Most of them are by acclaimed masters from Bashō, Buson, and Issa, through Chiyo-ni and Shiki to Hekigodo, Hakusen Watanabe, John Stevenson, Jim Kacian, and Peggy Willis Lyles. Few can doubt their credentials.

Where no translator is given, the translations are mine taking into account other versions, after consulting the dictionaries, online translation resources, and sometimes Japanese native speakers. That haiku are short is a great advantage.

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.

—Keith Evetts

Vidya Premkumar

Comments (21)

  1. Finally, comment on the last HOTD for May, Shiki’s freed bugs:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/shiki-tr-keene/

    Comment on Watanabe’s HOTD (war…) at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/hakusen-watanabe-tr-banya-natsuishi/

    Comment on John Stevenson’s HOTD of 29 May (in the beginning…) at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/john-stevenson-21/

    Comment on HOTD of 28 May: “loneliness lies within the listener” by Chiyo-jo aka Chiyo-ni at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/chiyo-ni-tr-patricia-donegan-and-yoshie-ishibashi/

    Comment on Santoka’s HOTD of 27 May (peace for the heart) at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/taneda-santoka/

    Comment on Issa’s HOTD of 26 May (people, flies and Buddhas) at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/issa-tr-lanoue-2/

    Comment on Basho’s HOTD of 25 May (do not forget) at
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/basho-tr-reichhold/

    Link to comment on Jeffrey Ferrara’s HOTD of 24 May (autumn leaves rarer than gold):
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/jeffrey-ferrara/

    Link to comment on Patricia Machmiller’s HOTD of 23 May (absent magnolia):
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/patricia-j-machmiller-4/

    Link to comment on HOTD of 22 May, Issa’s charming flea:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/issa-tr-blyth-2/

    Link to comment on Peggy Willis Lyle’s HOTD of 21 May (into the bones):
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/peggy-willis-lyles-6/

    Link to comment on Lanoue’s HOTD of 20 May (the old priest) here:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/david-lanoue-2/

    Comment added on James W Hackett’s HOTD of 19 May (blossoms that held bees) at https://thehaikufoundation.org/james-w-hackett-2/

    Comment added on Deborah A. Bennet’s HOTD of 18 May (wail of a loon) at https://thehaikufoundation.org/deborah-a-bennett-2/#comment-168129

    Comment added on John Stevenson’s HOTD for 17 May (a thousand rumps) at:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/john-stevenson-20/

    Comment added on Alan Summers’ HOTD of 15 May (night train): https://thehaikufoundation.org/alan-summers-12/

    Comment added on rhyme and Francine Banwarth’s HOTD (wishbone) of 15 May here:
    https://thehaikufoundation.org/francine-banwarth-2/

    Comment added for Issa’s HOTD of 14 May (….I slept!) at https://thehaikufoundation.org/issa-tr-blyth/

    Two weeks into the month, the system closes comments for this post. I’ll continue to add comments to the individual poems as they are posted during the second half of the month. If interested, you can find them as they are posted by entering the name of the poet in THF’s search box. And I’ll try to add the urls to this comment as we go.

  11. For those interested enough to follow these, but who find it tricky to locate both this post (which disappears from the home pages after a day or two) and the individual post giving the Haiku of the day:

    1. To find the introductory post of the month click the HAIKU OF THE DAY heading that appears over the haiku in THF’s home page banner.

    2. To find the individual poem, search the THF site for the poet’s name as given in the banner. Results for HOTD are flagged, and the most recent result will be at the top if you are searching within a few days or weeks of the post appearing. So, if searching for today’s post and comment (if any) on Issa’s “one man, one fly / one large sitting room,” in THF”’s search box simply put “Issa” and behold…

  17. THANK YOU for this refreshing viewpoint! I too have grown tired of hearing what haiku is not, and long to see what new horizons it could reach.

    1. Thank you, Vera. This is more about realising that the old horizons were much broader than the narrow ones of anglophone haiku pedagoguery.

    1. Keith, this is fabulous. I hope you’ll be able to continue with the comments and thank you for the transliteration of the Japanese today.

Comments are closed.

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