Haiku in English

A haiku in English is an English-language poem written in a form or style inspired by Japanese haiku. Like their Japanese counterpart, haiku in English are typically short poems and often reference the seasons, but the degree to which haiku in English implement specific elements of Japanese haiku, such as the arranging of 17 phonetic units (either syllables or the Japanese on) in a 5–7–5 pattern, varies greatly.
In Japanese, a traditional haiku is a one-line poem that describes two things. However, in English, a traditional haiku usually has three lines arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern. The Haiku Society of America has two definitions of a haiku. The first defines the Japanese haiku as an unrhymed poem "recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which Nature is linked to human nature" consisting of 17 on. The second definition applies to English-language haiku: "A foreign adaptation of [the Japanese form], usually written in three lines totaling fewer than 17 syllables." In a book chapter discussing haiku form, Sato emphasizes that the definition does not say how many syllables each line ought to have.
Haiku are normally associated with a focus on nature or the seasons and a division into two asymmetrical sections that juxtaposes two subjects (e.g. something natural and something human-made, two unexpectedly similar things, etc.). This juxtaposition was an important technique for haiku in English in both the 20th and 21st centuries. There is usually a contemplative or wistful tone and an impressionistic brevity that lends the form to an emphasis on imagery, especially sensory imagery. Haiku can contain occasional simile and metaphor. Some haiku experts, like Robert Speiss and Jane Reichold, have said that a haiku should be expressed in a single breath.
Many Japanese haiku are structured around the number of phonetic units known as on, with a three-phrase format in which 17 on are distributed in a 5–7–5 pattern (5 on in the first phrase, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third). This has prompted an idea that English-language haiku should adopt a similar structure in which syllables are arranged across three lines in a 5–7–5 structure. Linguists, however, note two on often form a single syllable and that a 17-on phrase is, on average, about 12 syllables. Consequently, many contemporary English-language haiku poets work in forms of 10 to 14 syllables. Modern haiku can be greater or fewer than the expected seventeen syllables.
When translators of Japanese haiku split poems into three lines, it created a perception that a haiku in English ought to have three lines, even though Japanese haiku were commonly written in a single vertical line. The most common variation from the three-line standard is one line, sometimes called a monoku. It emerged from being more than an occasional exception during the late 1970s. One branch of modern haiku dispenses with syllable counts and prefers to define a haiku as two to four short phrases that are unrestricted, according to the poet Natsuishi Ban'ya. Poets with this looser definition sometimes use more than three lines in their poems.
According to Charles Trumbull, the first haiku printed in English were three translations included in the second edition of William George Aston's A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language (1877). Aston's A History of Japanese Literature, first published in 1899 and a major reference source for early 20th-century poets, also described the "haikai" poetic form.
The first haiku composed in English, at least in form, were written in response to haiku contests. In Britain, the editors of The Academy announced the first known English-language haikai contest on April 8, 1899, shortly after the publication of William George Aston's History of Japanese Literature. The Academy contest inspired other experimentation with the format. Bertram Dobell published more than a dozen haikai in a 1901 verse collection, and in 1903 a group of Cambridge poets, citing Dobell as precedent, published their haikai series, "The Water Party." The Academy's influence was felt as far away as Australia, where editor Alfred Stephens was inspired to conduct a similar contest in the pages of The Bulletin. The prize for this (possibly first Australian) haiku contest went to Robert Crawford.
Ezra Pound's influential haiku-influenced poem, "In a Station of the Metro", published in 1913, was the "first fully realized haiku in English," according to the editors of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. In his essay "Vorticism," Pound acknowledged that Japanese poetry, especially hokku (the linked verse poem that haiku is derived from), was a significant influence on his poetry. It is likely that he first encountered Japanese poetry in the Poets' Club with T. E. Hulme and F. S. Flint around 1912. In the essay, Pound described how he wrote a 30-line poem about the experience of exiting a metro train and seeing many beautiful faces. Two years later, he had reduced it to a single sentence in the poem In a Station of the Metro:
Pound wrote that representing his experience as an image made it "a thing inward and subjective".
In the United States, Yone Noguchi published "A Proposal to American Poets," in The Reader Magazine in February 1904, giving a brief outline of his own English hokku efforts and ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets! You say far too much, I should say." Noguchi was a bilingual poet writing in Japanese and English who was acquainted with Pound. He published an essay called "What Is a Hokku Poem" (1913) where he wrote that a hokku was an expression of longing toward nature that is "never mystified by any cloud or mist like Truth or Beauty". He encouraged an objective standpoint by referring to Zen philosophy, which sees good and evil as human inventions. Noguchi published his own volume of English-language Japanese Hokkus in 1920 and dedicated it to Yeats. During the Imagist period, a number of mainstream poets, including Richard Aldington, and F. S. Flint published what were generally called hokku, although critic Yoshinobu Hakutani wrote that compared to Pound and Noguchi, these were "labored, superficial imitators."
In the Beat period, original haiku were composed by Diane di Prima, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac. Kerouac became interested in Buddhism from reading Thoreau, and he studied Mahayana Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in conjunction with his work writing The Dharma Bums. As part of these studies, Kerouac referenced R. H. Blyth's four-volume Haiku series, which included a volume on Eastern culture.
Richard Wright's interest in haiku began in 1959 when he learned about the form from beat poet Sinclair Beiles in South Africa. Wright studied the four-volume series by Blyth as well as other books on Zen Buddhism. He composed some 4,000 haiku between 1959 and 1960 during an illness and reduced them to 817 for a collection which was published posthumously. His haiku show an attention to the Zen qualities present in the haiku he read as models.
James W. Hackett is another influential haiku poet from this time period who agreed with Blyth that Zen was an essential element of haiku. Charles Trumbell wrote that in the mid-1960s, "his haiku were unquestionably among the best being written outside Japan". Hackett corresponded with Blyth for advice and encouragement in composing haiku, and Blyth promoted Hackett's poetry in his own work. Subsequent haiku poets did not insist as strongly on the connection of Zen with haiku.
The first English-language haiku group in America, founded in 1956, was the Writers' Roundtable of Los Altos, California, under the direction of Helen Stiles Chenoweth. They also studied the Blyth collection, as well as an anthology translated by Asatarou Miyamori, The Hollow Reed (1935) by Mary J.J. Wrinn, and Haikai and Haiku (1958) among others. The group published an anthology in 1966 called Borrowed Water.
In 1963 the magazine American Haiku was founded in Platteville, Wisconsin, edited by James Bull and Donald Eulert. Among contributors to the magazine were poets James W. Hackett, O Mabson Southard, Nick Virgilio, Helen Chenoweth, and Gustave Keyser. Other co-editors included Clement Hoyt (1964), Harold Henderson (1964), and Robert Spiess (1966). In the second issue of American Haiku Virgilio published his "lily" and "bass" haiku, which became models of brevity, breaking the conventional 5-7-5 syllabic form, and pointing toward the leaner conception of haiku.. The magazine established haiku as a form worthy of a new aesthetic sense in poetry.
The Haiku Society of America was founded in 1968 and began publishing its journal Frogpond in 1978. In 1972, Lorraine Ellis Harr founded the Western World Haiku Society.
American Haiku ended publication in 1968; Modern Haiku published its first issue in 1969. Haiku Highlights, was founded 1965 by European-American writer Jean Calkins and later taken over by Lorraine Ellis Harr and renamed Dragonfly: A Quarterly of Haiku (1972-1984). Eric Amann published Haiku (1967-1970) and Cicada (1977-1982) in Canada. Cicada included one-line haiku and tanka. Leroy Kanterman edited Haiku West (1967-1975).
The first Haiku North America conference was held at Las Positas College in Livermore, California, in 1991, and has been held on alternating years since then. The American Haiku Archives, the largest public archive of haiku-related material outside Japan, was founded in 1996. It is housed at the California State Library in Sacramento, California, and includes the official archives of the Haiku Society of America.
English-language haiku journals published in the U.S. include Modern Haiku, Frogpond (published by the Haiku Society of America), Mayfly (founded by Randy and Shirley Brooks in 1986), Acorn (founded by A. C. Missias in 1998), Bottle Rockets (founded by Stanford M. Forrester), The Heron's Nest (founded by Christopher Herold in 1999, published online with a print annual), Tinywords (founded by Dylan F. Tweney in 2001). Some significant defunct publications include Brussels Sprout (edited from 1988 to 1995 by Francine Porad), Woodnotes (edited from 1989 to 1997 by Michael Dylan Welch), Hal Roth's Wind Chimes, and Wisteria.
In the United Kingdom, publications of Haiku include Presence (formerly Haiku Presence), which was edited for many years by Martin Lucas and is now edited by Ian Storr, and Blithe Spirit, published by the British Haiku Society and named in honor of Reginald Horace Blyth. In Ireland, twenty issues of Haiku Spirit edited by Jim Norton were published between 1995 and 2000, and Shamrock, an online journal edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, published international haiku in English from 2007 to 2022. In Australia, twenty issues of Yellow Moon, a literary magazine for writers of haiku and other verse, were published between 1997 and 2006; Paper Wasp was published in Australia until 2016. Echidna Tracks is a biannual Australian haiku publication. Kokako is the journal of the New Zealand Poetry Society and Chrysanthemum (bilingual German/English) in Germany and Austria. Two other online English-language haiku journals founded outside North America, A Hundred Gourds and Notes from the Gean, are now defunct. John Barlow's Snapshot Press is a UK-based publisher of haiku books. The World Haiku Club publishes The World Haiku Review.