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.

Winter season word: “Night comes early”

night comes earlier
and earlier . . .  finally
all of it is here

As winter approached, a little more darkness was added to each night. Finally, on the night of the solstice, all of it had arrived. I gave an involuntary shiver when I wrote this haiku. Its meaning was darker than I intended. The solstice wanted to show me that darker meaning, so I let it stand.  —Clark Strand

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the winter season word “night comes early.” 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 words “night comes early.”

Haiku Tip: Prowl the Leaky Edge of Language!

The haiku form is very simple—just seventeen syllables arranged in a pattern of 5-7-5, including a season word. And yet, as we’ve seen with each month’s challenge, that simple form can express a multitude of meanings. With a little creativity and finesse, we can say almost anything in a haiku. Given that, the question becomes: Where are the best meanings found?

Mediocre haiku come in myriad guises, but they have one thing in common—the use of clichés. The word comes from the French for “stereotype” and, according to Wikipedia, means “an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating.” A cliché is a predictable meaning expressed in unoriginal words.

How do we avoid this in a poetic form that, by virtue of its brevity and relative ease of composition, is particularly vulnerable to unoriginality? So far as I know, there are two principal methods: (1) writing from direct observation, and (2) writing lots and lots of haiku on a given theme until the clichéd meanings are exhausted and we end up with an original poem. 

Every season word is a cliché—an experience shared by generations of people and found to be meaningful in relatively predictable, reliable ways. The problem is that eventually those experiences become too predictable. When that happens, they lose their vitality.

Time turns in a great circle with the yearly passing of the seasons and the world is constantly renewed. But the older a culture or a person gets, the more predictable the world begins to feel. Poets are the rejuvenators of language and, therefore, the resuscitators of the natural world.

As haiku poets, we learn to prowl the limits of a particular season word, exploring its outer edges until we find the place where the fresh meanings are seeping, like water, into the land of what is already known or understood. We may start at the center with entirely conventional or expected meanings, but if we keep spiraling outward, eventually we will find that leaky edge. That is where the good poems live because that is where Life and Nature live.

Our job as haiku poets is to travel to that outer edge and bring a poem back to the center to revitalize the language we think in and use as our principal tool in creating and maintaining the culture in which we live.

A note on night comes early: The season word “night comes early” falls under the broader seasonal topic “shortest day.” That topic includes a variety of additional season words, including “winter solstice” and “early dusk,” each of which has its own unique flavor. “Night comes early” refers to the arrival of night, rather than dusk or twilight, and suggests a transition to darkness that can feel so sudden and irrevocable that it takes us by surprise. 

October’s Winning Poem: 

Spring season word: “Red Leaves”

my elders slowly
becoming my ancestors—
red leaves in the wind

— Valerie Rosenfeld

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

Previous Winners

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Submission Form