Illustrations by Jing Li

At seventeen syllables, haiku is the shortest poem in world literature. It is now also the most popular form of poetry in the world, written in nearly every language. And yet, as haiku has spread internationally, one of the most important aspects of the tradition has largely been lost—the community of poets.

In Europe and the United States, haiku is often regarded as the domain of literary elites, but this is not the case in Japan, where haiku is deeply rooted in communal activity. Millions of amateur Japanese poets belong to haiku groups (clubs, really), which are sponsored by different “schools” of haiku, each with its own magazine. Most daily and weekly newspapers carry a haiku column featuring poems submitted by their subscribers, sometimes on the front page.

To help bring back this social dimension, we are inviting our readers to participate in the monthly Tricycle Haiku Challenge. Each month, moderator Clark Strand will select three poems to be published online, one of which will appear with a brief commentary. Each quarter, one of these poems also will appear in the print magazine alongside an extended commentary. In this way, we can begin to follow the seasons together—spring, summer, fall, and winter—and share the joy of haiku together as a community. 

Requirements:

Anyone can submit haiku to the monthly challenge using the form below. To be considered for publication, your haiku must: 

  1. Be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables:
    Getting the syllables of a haiku to sit naturally inside of its seventeen-syllable form is the primary challenge. Each haiku is a word problem in search of a satisfying seventeen-syllable solution. 
  2. Contain the “season word” assigned for that month:
    A haiku isn’t only a word problem. To the seventeen syllables the poet must add a turn of thought that results in more than seventeen syllables of meaning—along with a word that refers to one of the four seasons. How the poet uses “season words” like autumn sun or dew will typically determine the effectiveness of the poem.

Part of the reason haiku appeals to so many people is that its rules are simple and easy to follow, yet it can take a lifetime to master them. Ten million people currently write haiku in Japanese. There is no reason why millions can’t write haiku in English, too, provided they agree on the basics. The turn of thought you add to that simple formula of 5-7-5 syllables with a season word is entirely up to you.

Submissions close on the last day of the month at 11:59 pm ET, and the results will be posted the week after. Monthly submissions are anonymized and the winning poems are selected in a blind process.

To learn more about the history and principles of haiku, check out Clark Strand’s online course with Tricycle, “Learn to Write Haiku: Mastering the Ancient Art of Serious Play.”


This Month’s Season Word: 

Submit as many haiku as you please using the submission form below. Just be sure to include this month’s season word.

Spring season word: “Tulip”

tulip bulbs are proof
that if you love a color
you should bury it

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the season word “tulip.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word* and try to stay close to that.

*REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the word “tulip.”

Haiku Tip: Write haiku as a form of popular literature!

As an artform, haiku is not as monolithic as most Western readers suppose. Even Japanese traffic slogans are often written in 5-7-5. The same with jokes, advertising jingles, and public service announcements. And this is nothing new. Arrangements of 5-7-5 syllables are pervasive in Japanese culture and always have been.

In the premodern age, this gave rise to the first popular poetic pastime in world literature. One person would contribute a poem written in 5-7-5 syllables, the other a 7-7 syllable verse to complete, or “cap,” that poem. Or sometimes the order would be reversed.

The practice of “verse capping” goes back 1,300 years to the Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”), the first book ever published in Japan. But the poets included in that anthology, which privileged the culture of the nobility, were hardly representative of Japan as a whole. This changed with the advent of printing and mass-reproduction. By the 17th century, Japan could boast the highest level of literacy in the world.

With so many more people suddenly able to read and write, verse capping games became incredibly popular. A local referee (usually a poet of some note) would issue a challenge written in lines of 7-7 syllables, and participants from all walks of life would submit 5-7-5 syllable caps for judging.

These 17-syllable caps ran such a broad gamut in terms of quality and content that it is hard to know how to categorize them today. Verses could be sublime, profound, witty, funny, satirical, dirty, or even scandalous. Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) cut his teeth on 17-syllable poetry as a verse capping referee during his years in Tokyo, and it was probably this experience that accounts for the down-to-earth quality of his haiku.

One can understand why Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) wanted to dismiss the older, more freewheeling style of 17 syllable verse in his effort to establish haiku as a serious modern artform. But in so doing Shiki and his followers restricted the scope of 17-syllable versification, imposing rules that poets of previous centuries would never have understood the logic for, much less observed.

There are now upwards of 10 million active haiku poets in Japan, plus millions more writing in other languages around the globe. Although there are still some who believe, along with Shiki, that the goal of haiku is “the objective description of nature,” many write haiku as a form of popular literature, incorporating elements of ordinary speech, slang, humor, and topical culture to give their poems accessibility and mass appeal.

We are following that older verse capping tradition in our Tricycle Haiku Challenges, using season words instead of 7-7 syllable phrases as prompts. The use of seasonal themes provides us with a vital connection to the haiku tradition, while still allowing for a broad range of self-expression.

For the rest, we favor the older, premodern approach that sees the 5-7-5 form as a game-like invitation to expansive poetic play. At its most basic, a haiku is whatever you can get away with in 17 syllables. That is the only “rule” that holds true across the entire history of haiku.

A note on tulips: This month’s season word belongs to the “Plants” category for spring. A member of the lily family, tulips grow wild over much of Southern Europe and Central Asia. They were first cultivated in the 1oth century (probably in Persia) and by the 1400’s were among the most prized, and most expensive, flowers in the world. Tulips bloom in the springtime in a variety of bright colors—including red, orange, pink, yellow, or white. They go dormant from summer to early spring, at which time their bulbs begin to send up shoots. The Netherlands (the country most often associated with tulips) continues to be the world’s top producer of these flowers, exporting as many as 3 billion bulbs annually to other countries around the world. 


January’s Winning Poem: 

Winter season word: “Cold Mountain”

I would go with you
on that trek up Cold Mountain
but who’d feed the cat?

— Jo Podvin

cold mountain haiku
Illustration by Jing Li

You can find the honorable mentions, additional commentary, and January’s haiku tips here


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