GUIDELINES: How to Compose Haiku
Susumu Takiguchi, UK

Some useful guidelines can be gleaned from the various teachings and advice given by three centuries of haiku masters and practitioners, from Basho to Kyoshi.

1. Try to write a haiku only about what actually happens to you (i.e. avoid fictitious, or imaginary renderings).
    

2. Try to write a haiku, only when you have been deeply moved, strongly inspired and poetically touched by the subject matter (i.e. do not "fake" poetic feelings).
    

3. Try to write a haiku immediately after the haiku feeling has hit you and do not leave it for too long. Alterations and changes are an essential part of haiku-writing process, but do not linger or elaborate. If it does not write easily, leave it and do something else.
    

4. Try to reject clichés, hackneyed expressions and words, or even deep feelings if they have been used time and time again by countless haiku poets.
    

5. Try not to use embellishment or "lay it on thick", even if you have hit on a brilliant idea. Be honest, simple, clear, straightforward and modest.
    

6. Try not to "explain". Haiku is not science and should need no explanation if it is good.
    

7. Try not to "conceptualise", "intellectualise", "philosophise", "moralise" or "theorise".
    

8. Try not to "report". "Express" it.
    

9. Try not to be "clever", gimmicky, over-witty, artificial, presumptuous, too precious, mysterious or esoteric. Just be "natural".
    

10. Try not to express your raw and subjective feelings, such as being "happy", "sad", "lonely", or "glad" in so many words. Express them by presenting some concrete action, object etc. (e.g. "Even coughing, I do all alone.", Ozaki Hosai) and let the concrete image speak for itself.
     

11. Try to keep some detachment, even in the most dire circumstances, and preserve always a sense of humour. Haiku is not in the business to be cold or unkind, but it is not about wallowing in raw sentiments in misery either. Always remember that haiku originated from haikai no renga (or, comic renga), and the sense of humour remains a prerequisite of the haiku spirit.
     

12. Try not to explain the minutiae, but keep to the essentials and leave the rest to the readers' imagination. If your haiku feeling is deep, your haiku will be deep, i.e.,  if you are deep, so much more will be your haiku. Good haiku comes from your whole being like a good singing voice from the singer's whole body, and from his mind, and from his entire life.

 

Reprinted from: Kiyoshi, A Haiku Master, by Susumu Takiguchi, Ami-Net International Press, Oxfordshire, 1997 pp. 104-105.

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