The Accidental Haiku Poet – An Essay by David Green

Today, New to Haiku is happy to welcome one of our readers, David Green, to share his journey into haiku. David is an associate editor at confluence. His haiku have appeared in Modern Haiku, Mayfly, The Heron’s Nest, Wales Haiku Journal and other fine publications, and his work has been honored by the HSA Senryu Awards, the North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Awards, and the inaugural and second Atlanta Haiku Festival. Welcome, David!

The Accidental Haiku Poet – An Essay by David Green

Three and a half years ago, I accidentally became a haiku poet after reading an online opinion piece about the importance of having a “daily creative practice.” The writer suggested haiku as a “quick and easy way” to do something creative daily. So, as a New Year’s resolution, I began writing a haiku a day, just like I had been taught in elementary school: three lines of 5/7/5 syllables that should be about nature, or so I thought.

I began reading about haiku that first week and quickly realized that writing these poems with the beauty, complexity and nuance which embody them was neither “quick” nor “easy.”

Fortuitously, in those first few days, I found my way to The Haiku Foundation website and the “New to Haiku” (NtH) series. I began reading every single entry available at that time, from the initial “What is Haiku?” in December 2020 to “Advice for Beginners – Corinne Timmer” from January 2023––80 columns in all.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I tend to be a completist. In this case, it served me exceedingly well. Books, articles, websites, journals, organizations and poets that caught my eye through their repeated mention in the series became my “haiku curriculum.”

What I find fascinating, when looking back now at the haiku I wrote that first month, is how well my haiku journal captures my haiku learning journey. As I read about the basic elements that haiku should typically include my daily poems began to evolve. Four essential “targets” soon guided my efforts:

1. Haiku are not about syllable counting. 5/7/5 syllable poems in English are often too long for haiku (although there is debate on this!). Haiku should be “one breath” long. This is usually closer to 10-13 syllables in English, but haiku should be “as short as they need to be.” 
2. Haiku often have a “season word,” known in Japanese as a kigo. In English-language haiku, we might simply make reference to the time of year.
3. Haiku are objective recordings of a moment captured by one’s senses, not a subjective take of one’s thoughts or feelings about that moment.
4. Haiku consist of two distinct, juxtaposed parts, separated by a “cut” (kire) which give a reader the chance to bring their own experiences into play as to how the parts connect to one another. In Japanese haiku, there are specific words which are used to cut the poem. In English, we use punctuation or breaks in the text. [Julie’s note: You can read more about English-language haiku and punctuation here.]

Before learning about and trying to incorporate these elements, this is what I wrote:

1.1.23: (Day 1)
Cherry Drop

Five minutes after
midnight a cheer fills the air as “2023”
finally lights up

In this first poem I was trying to write a 5/7/5 poem and squeeze far too much into it. (My HSA mentor group knows I still do this at times). I included a title (before learning haiku should not have them) simply to sneak in a bit of context (again, trying to squeeze more in) and it bothered me that the second line had more than 7 syllables (13!) but I didn’t know how to whittle it down.

That said, reading my journal now from that first week, I actually find some decent, objective images that are worth revisiting: a cat dragging a toy down a hallway, a patch of snow with popcorn on it, a bunk bed stripped of its sheets, future Christmas trees.

1.6.23 (Day 6)

icy rain dots the
windshield: a dark, still moment
before the train comes

I am still sticking to 17 syllable haiku here. “Icy rain” was probably an unintentional seasonal reference. Here’s a tip: figure out a way that works for you to record such moments when they happen because you might forget them later. I typed this into the Notes app on my phone while waiting for my daughter to arrive on the Chicago-area commuter rail near midnight.

What this indicates to me is that I had already started wearing my “haiku glasses” just six days in. At any given, present moment, I was using my senses to survey and record an objective experience as it was happening and consciously contemplating the haiku possibilities in that moment. And I have not taken off these haiku glasses since.

By the end of that first week, I clearly had learned that haiku need not be 5/7/5 syllables and could/should be shorter, that “syllable counting” should not be the main focus, if at all:

1.7.23 (Day 7)

winter sunlight blocked
by a bedroom door
you are home

The notion of a seasonal reference or kigo began to take hold, given I wrote “winter sunlight” versus simply “sunlight.” The use of “winter” here seems more deliberate than the poem from one day earlier; it intentionally denotes the time of year.

In just one week, I was already beginning to use three of the four main targets which would guide my nascent haiku journey.

On January 9th, I seem to have learned the fourth target––far harder than the first three––about “phrase and fragment” and the need for “juxtaposition” (although not how to do it well just yet).

1.9.23 (Day 9)

squirrels in a den––
back in the car
together

I most likely learned about juxtaposition, about the two-part form of haiku, from NtH articles which reference, respectively, Lee Gurga’s Haiku: A Poet’s Guide and teen poet Sarah Welch’s guidelines that haiku should contain “two parts.” Also, my first “how to” book, a used copy of Higginson’s The Haiku Handbook had arrived.

With my older child back home on college vacation, I noted that our family was all in the car together after many months apart. This gave me the phrase “back in the car / together” and I worked (inelegantly) to find a related fragment.

The second week of January found me grappling with juxtaposition while still trying to better understand kigo and the place of nature in haiku. I did not yet have anyone to talk to, to ask directly, to help me better understand all that I had been reading on my own. Meanwhile, I read countless haiku and tried to unlock their secrets.

1.11.23 (Day 11)

empty acorn caps —
winter coats tossed
on the frozen grass

1.14.23 (Day 14)

shoji screen
in the corner hiding nothing—
teenage mouse

Objective phrases came somewhat easily from my daily experiences: recess duty, tai chi class. What was needed was a juxtaposed fragment and I continued to write clunky ones. That said, the fact that I knew I should be including “juxtaposed fragments” in my haiku was a milestone.

That evening in mid-January, though, I started reading Haiku: A Poet’s Guide by Lee Gurga. It was one of many books about writing haiku that I bought in quick succession that first month. It was where I first came across the “spark plug” analogy to illustrate the goal of an effective juxtaposition, of the proper “distance” a poet hopes to achieve between phrase and fragment. Subsequent reading of haiku in books and journals included my careful attention to this distance.

On Day 16 of my New Year’s resolution, with Haiku: A Poet’s Guide in my carry on luggage, I went on a short trip. While on the plane, I wrote sixteen different fragments for the following phrase as I tried to find that “just right” distance between fragment and phrase.

1.16.23 (Day 16)

rain dots
the airplane window––
(fragment?)

The fragments captured the brainstorming/revising nature of writing poems (and the fact that a 3.5 hour flight is a great time to write lots of haiku). The fragments ranged from the somewhat simplistic and obtuse: “burr-covered sock” to the completely obtuse: “outdoor cat.” A few, upon rereading now, seem possible senryu: (which at the time I had not started learning about): free flight, hitching a ride.

The rest of that first month, I continued to record––objectively––the endless small moments that made up my days. I had stopped counting syllables and tried to keep my poems “as short as they needed to be” (which would gradually turn into an affinity for quite short haiku).

Phrases continued to come easily and, often, quickly. My notebook since then (to this day) is filled with poems like this:

phrase
written out exactly
[fragment TBD placeholder]

Juxtaposed fragments continued to challenge me, but each day, I sat and thought and wrote fragments for my daily poems as I tried to find ones that resonated properly.

On January 27th, I wrote a poem that, upon recent rereading, did not make me cringe and laugh at its clumsiness or simply make me think “meh”:

1.27.23 (Day 27)

lunar new year
from paper bags and kids
lions emerge

This poem, near the end of my first month of being a haiku poet, meets my objectives: there is a seasonal reference (kigo), fragment and phrase separated by a “cut” (kire), only fourteen syllables––“as short as it needed to be” (not that I was counting; I wasn’t), capturing a moment, a little twist at the end, and (I think) the chance for a reader to do a bit of contemplation and piece the moment together for themselves.

More importantly, though, at the time, was the great pleasure I took in “being present” to write this poem (when I went to pick up my students from music class), how focusing on this haiku moment (while wearing my “perpetually on” haiku glasses) kept any work/life/world worries at bay, even for just a moment.

That is just one of many gifts of being a haiku poet.

Today, 1,200+ days later, I still write at least one haiku daily. And while I know so much more about haiku than when I started, the four essential “targets” cited above still are foremost in my mind each day. Some days, I cannot record my poems fast enough. On others, I cast about searching for that “haiku moment” and hoping I do justice to it.

While intrigued by related Japanese short-form poetry that I learned about over these years, I purposely stuck to haiku only for a long time, sensing how vital this focus was to growing as a haiku poet. And this will still be the case 1,000+ days from now as I strive to capture, in such a tiny vessel, all that haiku can and should be.

That said, I have welcomed, more recently and with great satisfaction, a broader and deeper notion of Japanese aesthetics into my poem writing, as well as monoku and collaborative forms such as rengay and tan renga. Haiga and haibun are now in my repertoire too. I have dabbled in “experimental” haiku forms––especially through the use of parentheses and strike-thru to expand what haiku might be and convey––and I continue to grapple, and will likely do for a long time, with disjunction in my poems.

I’ve gotten a bit better at writing haiku over the past three+ years, thanks to so many people in my ever-expanding haiku world. From mentor/workshop groups to online courses, from websites, books and articles to in-person and virtual conferences and seminars, from email exchanges to text chains, so many poets were––and continue to be––kind enough to offer wisdom and encouragement.

FOR MORE READING

Here is a list of references, many of which I first learned about in the New to Haiku series:

• WEBSITES

AHA Poetry by the late Jane Reichhold
Graceguts by Michael Dylan Welch
Haiku Society of America
The Haiku Foundation

• ONLINE JOURNALS

I have enjoyed having immediate access to reading full issues of these fine journals:

The Heron’s Nest
tsuri-dōrō
Wales Haiku Journal

• BOOKS

Haiku: A Poet’s Guide by Lee Gurga. Lincoln, Illinois: Modern Haiku Press, 2003. Foreword by Charles Trumbull.

The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson with Penny Harter. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.

David Green (he/him) is a haiku poet, confluence haiku journal associate editor, elementary school teacher and occasional audio teacher and producer. His haiku journey began as a daily creative practice and quickly morphed into a passion. His haiku have appeared in Modern Haiku, Mayfly, The Heron’s Nest, Presence, the Wales Haiku Journal and other publications. David’s poems have won awards from the HSA Senryu Awards, the Atlanta Haiku Festival and NCPS Bloodroot Haiku Awards. His poems have also been featured by the Midwest Haiku Traveling Rock Garden. He was a confluence fellow in 2024-25. David has long been a poetry booster and thinks everybody should have more poetry in their life, especially given how poetry can offer respite and help foster compassion and community.

David is currently collaborating with the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association and Writers House to introduce haiku (properly) to Chicago-area students, replicating a pilot program from the Camden, NJ schools to “help students build on their creativity, confidence and self expression.”

When not sitting on his back porch in Chicago writing haiku while looking at an alley and power lines (also trees), David is probably practicing tai chi or reading just about anything.

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