#HaikuSeed – Weekly Haiku Prompt / Week #41

Best haiku will be featured in Last Week’s #HaikuSeed Blossoms weekly column here on our blog and on our Twitter account @HaikuSeed_with commentary from our editor Sankara Jayanth.

Submissions for each prompt will be open between Monday to Monday

We suggest you to go through previously featured haiku and commentary on them in the column Last Week’s #HaikuSeed Blossoms to get a sense of the kind of haiku we are looking for.

Do not be quick to submit the haiku you write. Spend time on it, edit it, reshape it. Sometimes the difference between great haiku and an average one might be just a punctuation. So investing time in cultivating your haiku is important. Send us your best efforts. Move away from common images that arise from the prompts because usually many people associate similar memories or thoughts to a single word, so to write fresh haiku, you need to shift away from the prompt some times.

A Few Reminders About Writing Haiku:

• A good haiku consists of two images juxtaposed together using as simple a language as possible allowing the reader to visualize the scene and fill all the things left unsaid.
• Usually in haiku, one image acts as a fragment and the other as a phrase. These two are traditionally separated by a keriji (cutting word). In English, we make use of punctuation like ellipses (…), em-dash (—) and other characters to denote a cut/break between the two images. This break between the two images in the haiku has a lot of significance and plays a major role in how deep and vivid your haiku becomes in the reader’s mind. It is not merely a punctuation!
• The #HaikuSeed prompt is just that – a seed. Your haiku need not feature the prompt word as long as the haiku is triggered from the prompt word and contains some aspect relevant to the prompt word.
• Try to use a kigo (seasonal word/reference/context) in your haiku, be it the prompt word itself or something else you find apt as historically the likes of Basho, Issa, Buson have created wonders with haiku themed around nature, allowing portals to open up in the reader’s minds into unseen and unexperienced worlds. We are mainly looking for nature-themed haiku. There will be exception now and then as we will feature brilliantly written senryu but please do try to submit nature-themed haiku as well.

(In)Valuable Resources To Learn More About Haiku

1. The Heart of a Haiku by Kala Ramesh – The British Haiku Society
2. New to Haiku? – The Haiku Foundation

Submissions

There are two ways you can submit your haiku written for #HaikuSeed prompt:

1. Submit your haiku using the form below.
2. On Twitter, use hashtag #HaikuSeed in your tweet along with your haiku.

Please submit up to 3 haiku for each prompt. We strongly request writers to not spam the #HaikuSeed hashtag on Twitter by using it for haiku you’ve not written for our prompt as it becomes difficult to sift through all the entries each week.

Hope wonderful haiku blossom from our #HaikuSeed prompts.

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