Not A Prompt
Tags: Monoku, Poetry In Form, Haiku, Submission Guidelines, Tanka

Not A Prompt

Photo by Lucie Hošová on Unsplash

Hello, House of Haikuers,

This newsletter is a review of Submission Guidelines. Tracy Aston and I are receiving many submissions that don’t meet the criteria, and private messaging poets about issues is not a good use of our time. So, let’s review and get on the same path.

We publish traditional haikus and tankas. A haiku has a syllable count per line of 5/7/5 and a tanka’s count is 5/7/5/7/7. You may reasonably argue that there are haiku and tanka forms that transcend the traditional forms but for the purpose of ease and consistency, we only publish 5/7/5 haikus and 5/7/5/7/7 tankas.

Here are two syllable counters to help you:

https://www.haikusyllablecounter.com/

https://syllablecounter.net/

Please confirm that your syllables adhere to the proper haiku and tanka configurations before submitting.

Regarding images, all poems must be accompanied by an image. If the image is yours, you must state so beneath the picture. If you use an online image, you must provide a hyperlink so we can confirm that the picture is open source (available for public use).

Now, a refresher on traditional haikus. These poems are more than collections of designated syllables in a certain line order. Classically, haikus focus on a brief moment of time in nature with a sudden sense of insight or wonder at the end. And, haikus have limited or no punctuation and should be readable in one breath.

Below is a famous haiku by the master Matsuo Basho:

An old pond

A frog jumps in —

the sound of water

The moment in nature is a frog jumping into a pond. The insight is the sound of the water when the frog jumps into the pond.

What a traditional haiku is not: a sentence chopped up to artificially meet the line/syllable counts, such as this example I wrote:

The house paint was green

a color that I don’t like

because it is dark

There is no flow to that poem. There is no insight or wonder. It is a statement of fact broken up into lines of designated syllables. It is not a haiku.

Although we don’t limit haikus to nature themes, we do encourage you to try to incorporate nature into your haiku poetry.

Tankas are very similar in flow to haikus but in a longer form.

A tanka is not a 31-syllable sentence broken into unnatural lines:

The house paint was green

a color that I don’t like

because it is dark

and dark houses are boring

I prefer bright paint colors

The poem above meets the technical requirements of a tanka but not the esthetic ones. Unlike haikus, traditional tankas are not limited to nature themes and often explore emotions, social issues, and fantasies — subjects that are intangible. A tanka should not be centered around something as physical and mundane as house paint, for example.

Lastly, we also accept monokus. A monoku is written on one horizontal line, has no more than 17 syllables, the first letter is not capitalized, there is no or very limited punctuation, and there is a natural pause in the line brought about by the rhythm of the speech. Here is one I wrote as an example:

cardinal wings by whispering good night

Ten syllables, one line, a natural pause. You may find other monoku forms online but this is the form we accept.

It’s not about rules and limitations; it’s about creativity. There are many Medium publications that feature free-form poetry — House of Haiku is not one of them. We are here to showcase three poetic forms — haiku, tanka, and monoku.

Poetry in form challenges our creativity.

So, let’s get creative!