The life-changing magic of writing haiku
Finding beauty and solace in a heartbeat-sized poem
Many years ago, back when I had peroxide blonde hair and my own provincial TV show, I went on the trail of Matsuo Bashō, one of Japan’s most famous poets. Just as I got to the top of a steep flight of stone steps at one particular temple and paused to catch my breath, I heard someone calling my name.
“Besu-san desu ka?” “Are you Beth?” enquired a monk, peering at me from a couple of feet away. “Eeto… sō desu keredomo…” I confirmed, a hint of confusion in my voice as I tried to figure out how I had been recognised by a stranger half way up the steps of a remote mountain temple.
He beamed, and bowed. “I always watch your programme.” I didn’t realise anyone actually watched the show I presented for Yamagata Cable TV, where I went around interviewing foreigners living in the local area. I didn’t expect the viewership to extend to monks on mountainsides and I certainly didn’t expect to get recognised. But this was nearly twenty-five years ago, when there weren’t many Brits living in rural Japan.
“Welcome to Yamadera,” he continued. “Is this your first visit?” Actually I happened to live nearby and regularly climbed the mountain temple’s thousand steps to drink in the air and the views, although that day I was there to learn more about the great poet who visited Yamadera in the late 1600s on his legendary journey to the deep north. Bashō rested there awhile, and penned one of his most famous poems:
stillness —
sinking into the rocks,
song of the cicadas
- Matsuo Bashō, translation my own[1]The monk and I chatted for a while and then he went on his way towards one of the temple buildings. I found a quiet place to sit. I took out my notebook to write a haiku. There on the same mountain, listening to the descendants of Bashō’s cicadas, looking out over the same valley, drawn by the same impulse to write, I felt a strange sense of overlapping time.
Of course where Bashō might have brushed his ink onto mulberry paper, I scratched my words into a notebook with a biro. The grass sandals of his day had given way to the hiking boots of mine. Somewhere in the distance was the concrete and glass government building where I worked, and beyond that Zaō, still bubbling with the same natural hot springs, but now boasting ski slopes where rough mountain passes used to be.
Writing of his visit Bashō said,
‘Monks at the foot of the mountain offered rooms, then we climbed the ridge to the temple, scrambling up through ancient gnarled pine and oak, smooth grey stones and moss. The temple doors, built on rocks, were bolted… The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open.’[2]
I suddenly felt so small against the mountain that had held the temple for centuries, and the tunnel of silence reached back through time to the moment he wrote those lines. I felt the years between our lives shrink to a single breath, with gratitude for the great poet’s presence and an unexpected, unfathomable grief for his absence.
Haiku can do this, both in the reading and writing. It is a kind of poetry that can root us to the moment whilst somehow stitching us into the tapestry of time as we witness something in the natural world that has been witnessed over and over throughout the centuries. The moon. A grasshopper. Wind in the pines. Haiku can attune us to the tiniest detail by what is said, and make us sense the scale of the universe and time itself by all that is left unsaid.
As a teenager, I had a haiku poem by Matsuo Bashō pinned on my bedroom wall. It read: ‘The first winter rains. From now on my name shall be Traveller.’ In just a few words, the gifted poet captured all my ideas about adventure and discovery out in the big, wide and wild world outside my bedroom door, while simultaneously transporting me to a cold wet day in seventeenth-century Japan. I would actually discover later that the original poem referenced autumn rains, not winter ones, but either way, I find something so rich and inspiring about these three simple lines.
There is also something else that reading and writing haiku has always done to me - or for me - which is to bring me into the present in an instant.
I’ll let you into a secret, which might be surprising for someone who has written a book called Wabi Sabi: Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life. ‘Perfect’ is actually one my favourite words. I use it all the time, but only ever in the context of moments. I believe that is the only occasion perfection is real. The tiniest slice of time can hover, shimmering in momentary stillness. And then it is gone. A perfect moment in an imperfect world.
In a world constantly in flux, moments like this can feel as if time itself is winking at us. For an instant we find ourselves completely immersed in the experience, not bothered about the past or future while simultaneously being aware that the moment itself will not last. In literature this is sometimes called ‘a haiku moment’, a description which captures the poetic beauty of beholding such a delicious sliver of experience.
These kinds of treasures are to be found in the smallest details of daily life, if we can slow down, be present and pay attention long enough to notice a natural beauty even more exquisite for its imminent vanishing. When we look at the world through haiku eyes we see it just as it is – in all its complexity and simplicity, harshness and beauty, ordinariness and wonder.
So what actually is a haiku?
In theory a haiku is very simple. It is a seasonal seventeen syllable (5-7-5) or three line poem, which accurately describes what is happening in front of the poet. It is a poetic form that originated in Japan and is now one of the most popular styles of poetry in the world.
Two of the lines tend to be connected to one main image, and the third line offers a contrasting or connected second image. Veteran translator Jane Reichhold calls these a ‘phrase’ and a ‘fragment’ respectively. In terms of position, the fragment can appear in the first line, or in the third.
sky drifts to nothing twitching on the lowest branch sparrow knows it’s time - A haiku I wrote this summer, which appears in my book Kokoro
According to one of Japan’s leading contemporary haiku poets, Madoka Mayuzumi,
‘It is because we must operate within the confines of a narrow, constricting poetic structure that we are compelled to give depth to our words. We must pare down and strip away all superfluous elements until all we have left is the bare essence; It is the tension created by the need to accommodate a prescribed shape that enhances the reverberating beauty of a poem.’[3]
Usually written from direct experience or memory, not imagination, a haiku can capture anything from the magnificence of a starry sky to the tiniest movement of a butterfly’s wing. Haiku poet Matsuo Bashō famously said, “To learn about the pine, go to the pine. To learn about the bamboo, go to the bamboo.” We know something by experiencing it, not just thinking about it.
Seasonal words are usually used to locate both the writer and the reader in space and time. The haiku poet is a master of details. It’s not a bird, it’s a skylark. It’s not a flower, it’s plum blossom. Writing haiku throughout the year is a beautiful way to slow down and track our lives as they unfold with the seasons.
One of my favourite translations of one of my favourite haiku goes like this:
a bee staggers out of the peony - Matsuo Bashō (translation Robert Hass)[4])
Different people receive haiku in different ways, but for me, I am drawn to the personality of the bee, a bold bright image against the delicate pastel beauty of the peony, a symbol of early summer. The detail of a bee staggering is a surprise. It makes me look more closely at the flowers in my own garden. Although Bashо̄ wrote only what he saw, as a reader my mind carries on beyond the poem to conjure up an indulgent image of being drunk on the sweetness of life. This poem has a nioi - a fragrance - reminiscent of the flower itself.
To borrow a phrase from Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, there exists in the poem a ‘continuity of discontinuity’ with the juxtaposition of the blooming peony which will soon fade, and the act of a bee visiting a flower in full bloom, which happens over and over again in nature. Without saying so directly, it reminds us that change is the only constant.
All in three simple lines.
A tonic for swirling thoughts
When I find myself too caught up in regrets about the past or worries about the future, I like to write haiku. One of the most popular forms of poetry in the world, haiku differ from a lot of poetry by being focused on what is happening in the outer world, rather than what is going on in your inner world. It can be refreshing to put all of your attention to what you can sense around you and write it down.
When we write a haiku we see something ordinary anew, and write it. We abandon our self to participate in the world - seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting – noticing. This is not the territory of metaphor and simile, it is that of the natural world observed with such exactness that is shakes us awake. It does not describe a feeling, but often elicits one in the reader with its exquisite attention to life unfolding. A haiku does not speak of loneliness, it tells of a crow on a bare branch at dusk in autumn.
A haiku is a doorway to beauty, a tool for slowing down and shrinking your attention to the vastness of the moment in front of you. When you begin to see the world through haiku eyes, you notice inspiration everywhere, and recognise the preciousness and fragility of life.
A haiku is a heartbeat-sized poem. In writing one, we capture a moment. In reading one, we enter that moment.
Madoka Mayuzumi says, “Composing a haiku means giving a voice to the “other” appearing before our eyes and taking a slice of Earth’s life. By so doing, we ourselves tap into the cosmic source of life and create a synchronicity and fraternity with other living beings. This is also a process of self-discovery, a journey to the depths of one’s own heart. It is through the “other” that we discover things about ourselves.”[5]
A haiku poet looks at something and sees its is-ness. The stoniness of a stone. The treeness of a tree. To write a haiku we have to slow down and tune in to the world around us. Jane Reichhold has described a haiku as a ‘word nest’ built to protect our inspiration until a reader can experience it as poetry[6], cradling the memory of a moment in the way we might hold a baby bird. I love how this explains not just what a haiku is, but what it can do.
Why not try to write a haiku of your own? Read on for some tips, and be sure to keep reading to the end of the essay to find a list of recommended books, and the chance to win some of them simply by sharing a haiku of your own.
How to write a haiku
(1) First read some haiku, pausing for after each one to let it sink in. (See ‘Poets to explore’ at the end of this essay)
(2) Go outside with your notebook and a pen. Breathe deeply, quieten your mind and tune in. See what is interesting. Rotate through your senses and make notes about what you can see, hear, smell, taste and feel (touch). Put a couple of those images together and connect them. Don’t personify things, or analyse or interpret. Just write what is.
(3) Capture the moment in a tiny three line poem. Write some more. Have fun. Toss them into the wind. Write still more. Feel free to share one or more of them in the comments of this post - I’d love to read them!
Tips
These are tips, not rules, because you will find professional haiku poets who break every single one of these and somehow still make it a haiku:
• Haiku nearly always include specific seasonal references. In Japanese these ‘season words’ are known as ‘kigo’ (季語) and often refer to plants, insects, the earth and sky, weather or other natural phenomena. When writing in English, you can use Japanese kigo for inspiration,[7] or you could try a word representing something local to you and the season you are in, like blackberries, or a cactus.
• Haiku often honour nature, and show a sense of compassion towards plants and creatures, even if simply through the quality of attention.
• Haiku are not about the poet, they are about what the poet observes. They rarely bring attention to the writer. In English, the easiest way to do this is to avoid using the pronoun ‘I’.
• Write in the present tense to bring the reader into the experience.
• Keep it simple. Drop most adjectives and adverbs. Write things as they are.
My wish for you
There is a beautiful haiku by Matsuo Bashō which captures how I want my writing life to be. It speaks of a cicada shell, and the cicada that sang itself utterly away.
I want to write myself utterly away, not just once like the cicada but over and over. When we dissolve our edges and limitations we are free to wander wherever we please, exploring all words can do, and all we can be.
I hope you will remember this, and stay open, surrendering to the creations that want to be born through you. I hope you will see the magnificence in your own ordinariness, and the ordinariness in your own magnificence.
I hope you will read and write haiku often - perhaps even starting today, tuning into the season you are in right now - and allow the act of doing so to open a door to beauty and offer refuge from the noise of the world.
Go now, and write yourself utterly away.
Poets to explore
In this essay I have talked a lot about Matsuo Basho, who is a favourite of mine and probably the most famous of all haiku poets. His poems are a good place to start, but there are many more. Here are a few to explore – if you Google them you will find many of their poems popping up, and most anthologies of haiku feature some of their work (see the end of this essay for recommendations).
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703-1775)
Yosa Buson (1716-1784)
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
Santoka Taneda (1882-1940)
Masaoka Shiki (1967-1902)
Madoka Mayuzumi (1962-
Perhaps as important as the original poet is the translator – the best translators make wonderful poets themselves, and can completely shift the impact of a poem when read in a language other than the original Japanese. Translators to look out for include Robert Hass, Jane Reichhold, and Sam Hamill.
There are also many haiku available to read on the website of The Haiku Foundation.
Recommended books
The Haiku Handbook: How to write, teach and appreciate haiku by William J Higginson and Penny Harter (Kodansha)
Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A hands-on guide by Jane Reichhold (Kodansha)
The Art of Haiku: Its history through poems and paintings by Japanese masters by Stephen Addiss (Shambhala)
The Essential Haiku by Robert Hass (Bloodaxe)
Basho: The Complete Haiku by Matsuo Basho, translated by Jane Reichhold
Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings by Matsuo Bashо, translated by Sam Hamill (Shambhala)
The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Sam Hamill (Shambhala)
Masaoka Shiki: Selected poems translated by Burton Watson(Columbia University Press)
Haiku Master Buson translated by Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert (White Pine Press)
Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson translated by W S Merwin & Takako Lento (Copper Canyon Press)
The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka Taneda by Sumita Oyama, translated by William Scott Wilson (Tuttle)
Poetry and Zen: Letters and uncollected writings of R H Blyth (Shambhala)
These days there are also many collections of haiku written in languages other than Japanese. Here are a few I have enjoyed:
Haiku in English: The first hundred years edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland & Allan Burns (Norton)
The Unswept Path: Contemporary American haiku edited by John Brandi and Dennis Maloney (White Pine Press)
Haiku Mind: 108 poems to cultivate awareness and open your heart by Patricia Donegan (Shambhala)
Jack Kerouac: Book of Haikus edited by Regina Weinreich (Enitharmon Press)
Haiku Moment: An anthology of contemporary North American haiku edited by Bruce Ross (Tuttle)
Enjoy! I can’t wait to read your haiku if you care to share any in the comments!
Beth Xx
Note: Some elements of this essay previously appeared in my books Wabi Sabi and The Way of the Fearless Writer.
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[1] Original haiku by Matsuo Bashō 閑かさや / 岩にしみ入る / 蝉の声 (shizukasa ya / iwa ni shimi-iru / semi no koe)
[2] Matsuo Bashō (trans. Sam Hamill), Narrow Road to the Interior p.58
[3] Haiku: The Heart of Japan in 17 Syllables essay by Madoka Mayuzumi p.4 available from The Haiku Foundation
[4] Introduction by Jane Reichhold in Higginson and Harter, The Haiku Handbook p.x
[5] Haiku: The Heart of Japan in 17 Syllables essay by Madoka Mayuzumi p.5 available from The Haiku Foundation
[6] Original haiku by Matsuo Bashō: 牡丹蘂深く分け出る蜂の名残かな (botanshibe fukaku wakeizuru hachi no nagori kana). Translation from Hass, The Essential Haiku p. 34.
[7]You can find a list of traditional Japanese season words here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kigo
Photos: Holly Bobbins Photography
A chilling wind fuels
the branches frenzied dancing
The lonely dog barks
Yellow falling leaves
Slow dance of liquid gold
Shivers in the air