Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Haiku festival!

It's time for another round of JP's haiku festival:

Haiku and senryuu, of course have the same three-line formal structure: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the last line. I like to have one line (doesn’t matter which one) that has an imperfection of plus-or-minus one syllable, just because imperfection is tragic, and tragic is beautiful. So I’d live to see your 5-8-5s, your 5-7-4s, your 6-7-5s…. whatever, as long as it’s only one imperfection. Perfect 5-7-5s will be accepted as well, but they are a little obvious, don’t you think?

Of course, free form haiku are welcome as well; heavy on the imagery, as stingy as possible when it comes to the syllable count.

As you know, the haiku form is related to seasons and nature. Senryuu, while sharing the same formal properties of haiku, are supposed to be funny. They can be witty political satire, golf-clappy high brow social commentary, or a juicy fart joke.


So put on your Inspiration Hat and go to JP's blog to contribute your haiku or senryuu by November 18.

1 comment:

jp 吉平 said...

wow! thanks for the big shout out!