Japan. The home of Mount Fuji, samurai, cherry blossoms, ninja, and the haiku (hī-koo). A country known for the love of nature and simplicity.
Haiku, the original minimalism, was created in response to the long, and strict poems of the day in the thirteenth century.
The hokku was originally the first and most predominant stanza of the one hundred stanza poem, renku. The hokku had specific requirements and grew in importance over time. In the seventeenth century, poets like Matsuo Bashō wrote anthologies of their poems which included some separate hokku.
In the nineteenth century, poets like Masaoka Shiki helped transform this initial stanza into a standalone poem, which became known as the haiku.
After the introduction of haiku to other languages and English in particular, approximately a century ago, the poetic form has metamorphosed into something more modern, leaving many of the traditional rules by the wayside and creating a new concise form of the poem which covers a plethora of topics and ideas.
What Is a Haiku Poem?
A haiku is a type of poem that references a season or the weather. Unlike many other English forms of poetry, haikus don’t rhyme. Instead they focus on simplicity and flow.
The purpose of haiku is to generate the most emotion and thought in just a few words representing the beauty or reality of nature and what it has to teach us.
Haiku Format
Because haiku originated in Japan, the requirements and structure are based on the Japanese language. On is the phonetic symbol used to describe the mora, which are small units of timing or rhythmic units in Japanese. They are equal to or shorter than a syllable.
So, instead of English syllables, 17 on, or the traditional three lines of 5-7-5 on, created the structure of the stanza. It was also written up and down and left to right, in traditional Japanese characters.
When translated into English, on became syllables, and it is written left to right and top to bottom. And while free form haiku are more popular nowadays, even the original haiku master Matsuo Bashō wrote haiku outside of the traditional 17 on.
In English, a syllable is a unit of sound in a word that is made of a single vowel or combination of vowel and consonants. To determine syllables, try clapping, while saying the word aloud, or you can peek in the dictionary.
For example, dic/tion/ar/y has four syllables. So, “Once dic/tion/ar/y—” could be the first line of a haiku, with five syllables. “Now, blink/ing lights on a screen,” has seven for the second line. The third line could be, “Tra/di/tion fades…gone.”
Haiku Rules
- Five syllables on the first line, followed by seven syllables on the second line, ending with five syllables on the third line—or not. Because there is also freeform haiku.
- A moment of realization. This is the heart of haiku.
- Kigo, the Japanese for a word that anchors the poem in a season, or nature—again, or not. Modern haikus stray from this rule like the dictionary one I wrote above.
- Kireji, a cutting word. This is a word that cuts off the stream of thought, breaking the poem into two parts. Modern haikus often use an exclamation point, em dash or ellipses to create this feeling. The two parts of the poem are connected, either one supporting the other or contrasting ideas or flipping the entire poem on its head and changing the meaning from what the reader thought.
How to Make a Haiku
Practice Mindfulness
Be extra aware of your surroundings and the things going on in the immediate present. Remove any distractions of the world and life to reach deep inside. Calming the mind now will allow it to work creatively later.
Think Outside the Box
Consider thinking about an object or event in another way or from a different perspective. This requires you to disregard your first several ideas as they will likely be cliché.
However, the Beat Generation who popularized haiku in America in the twentieth century, believed that you should use your first initial thought before logic can sweep in and destroy the emotion of the moment.
Moment of Insight
This will be the key to your poem. The most necessary aspect of your poem will be expressing this moment and what you learned, to the reader. Also, consider keeping a journal where you write down thoughts and discernments as they come to you, to save for later.
Writing
Like all other forms of expression through language follow the steps of choosing a topic, brainstorming ideas, words, and feelings, writing a draft, and finally revising. Though there are so few words in a haiku, that means each word matters more.
Consider writing out multiple drafts to get a good feel for what works for you and different possible combinations of words.
Five Senses
Create a sensory experience by using taste, touch, sound, sight, or smell to immerse your reader in the simple moment. With such a brief poem, there won’t be time to put all of the senses into it, so focus on one.
Read Aloud
Listening to the words stimulates a different part of your brain and can help you hear the rhythm and flow of your haiku. This will help you polish the poem and decide which words work best in creating the feel you are looking for. This is also when you would check to make sure it follows the syllable structure of 5-7-5.
Haiku Examples 5-7-5
Humans are imitators first, before their creativity takes hold and makes something their own. So, read many haiku from different time periods and various authors. Try to imitate them and find your poet’s voice.
*Note, there are many translations of the original Japanese haiku, these are just one.
Matsuo Bashō [1686]
古池や/蛙飛び込む/水の音
Furuike ya/ Kawazu tobikomu/ Mizu no oto
The old pond
A frog leaps in.
Sound of the water.
This is one of the most famous haiku of all time. It follows the 5-7-5 pattern, uses seasonal nature (when frogs are about and splashing), an auditory sense of sound, the surprise of things changing suddenly while other things remain the same, “ya” is a cutting on which separates the stillness of the moment with the motion.
Masaoka Shiki [~1895]
ひらひらと/風に流れて/蝶一つ
Hira hira to/ Kaze ni nagarete/ Chou hitotsu
Flutteringly,
Floating in the breeze,
A single butterfly.
Here, the reader experiences the hopeful, transitory state of spring. This scene contains visual elements, but you can almost feel the light, playful breeze pulling at your clothes and hair.
Yosa Buson [1769]
不二ひとつ/うづみのこして/若葉かな
Fuji hitotsu/ Uzumi nokoshite/ Wakaba kana
Only Mount Fuji
Is left unburied
By young leaves.
Much of traditional haiku shows the juxtaposition between things that change and those that stay the same because of Buddhist beliefs and the kigo, focus on nature. Here there is a sense of the stability of age versus the frivolity of youth.
Kobayashi Issa [Before 1828]
涼風の/曲がりくねって /来たりけり
Suzukaze no/ Magari-kunette/ Kitari keri
The cool breeze
Twisted and crooked,
Then came here.
This poem brings to mind the twists and turns life takes you on as you make choices.
Jack Kerouac [1971]
The sound of silence
is all the instruction
You’ll get
While this poem lacks the structure and sense of season or nature, the spirit of haiku is still here. The structure is still close, and there are still three lines.
It is the brevity and the intensity of the moment that shows the reader what the author has learned in this moment that makes this a haiku.
Murakami Kijo [~1905]
First autumn morning
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face
Here the author realizes at this moment that they have become their parent. The season is still mentioned and here it can be symbolizing where Murakami is in this stage of life.
Brandi Badgett [2025]
Cruelty of life;
The scalding sun, unyielding—
fight for cool, white, peace.
The idea is to create to symbolize the struggles of life with the positive and negative aspects of summer and then the haiku has a religious turn.
Alexis Rotella [2001]
Just friends:
he watches my gauze dress
blowing on the line.
Putting clothes up on a line is generally a summertime activity, so we have our season. And the moment here is fraught with emotion as the subject realizes their secret love will never be fulfilled.
John Sandbach [1994]
losing its name
a river
enters the sea
For me, this poem creates awareness for the dangers of losing yourself to others. Being unable to say “no” is a problem that some people have. But perhaps the author is reminding us that we are all a part of something bigger.
During spring time snow melts, the creeks join tributaries, which rush into the rivers, and then they all eventually lead to the sea. So, maybe “all paths lead to Rome” as they say. How would you interpret this haiku?
Amy Lowell [1921]
Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?
The wetness of the flowers creates the idea of a spring rain. Perhaps you can tell spring is my favorite time of year by my choices of haiku. But I love how this visual makes the author think of a loved one, symbolized by the portrait.
The final line changes the direction of how we’ve been thinking about the poem from the first two lines, another expectation of haiku.
Brandi Badgett [2025]
Mind like a still pool,
fish swimming in circles—
chaos with invasion.
Here is a moment in time of meditation and how the smallest thought, interruption, or just life eventually impedes upon that stillness.
The symbolism I imagined is how fish calmly swim in circles until a bug lands on the surface, or bait is thrown in, and they jump and fight for the food causing the water to splash. This is reminiscent of “The Old Pond” by Matsuo Bashō.
Natsume Soseki [1905]
The lamp once out
Cool stars enter
The window frame.
This poem can be taken literally as in, once the lamp is out and your eyes adjust to the darkness, then you can see the stars in the sky. It can also be a symbol for changing our focus and removing obstacles that are keeping us from seeing what is really there.
Jack Kerouac [1959]
Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.
Combining the birds singing with the rain makes me think of spring again. Birds singing in the dark are flipped on their head when the reader learns that it is dawn, but raining. The author uses an em dash to create that break in thought.
Kerouac’s haiku almost always break the 5-7-5 rule because he often uses even fewer syllables to get across his thoughts.
This haiku is similar to the old themes of something consistent contrasted with something changing because there are the birds singing at dawn, which is something that they always do during spring, but it is raining, which is something that comes and goes.
John Brandi [2010]
fallen leaves
the abbot sweeps
around them
Again, there is the modern tendency to use fewer syllables than the traditional 5-7-5. However, there are season and nature words with the “fallen leaves.”
The first two lines have the reader think they know what is happening but the final line changes everything. And the haiku makes one think about how there are things that have a purpose, though we don’t always use them for their purpose or sometimes we overlook what it is we should be doing.
Consider what this haiku means to you.
Tips For Writing a Haiku
- Allow the words to stand without explanation, even if you don’t fully understand your own poem.
- Use strong visual images and symbolism. This applies to any poetry.
- Do not use rhyming or other complicated figurative language. Haiku is all about keeping it simple and clean.
- Once you have completed your haiku, think about places where you could share it. There are places that you could submit for publication, or you could just read it to your friends and family.
- Study whatever it is you wish to write about. If you want to write a haiku about your cat, observe it, listen to it, touch it, bury your face in its fur, crawl on the ground and see the world from the cat’s point of view. It’s like method acting…maybe call it method writing?
- Like most art forms, you’ll find this list of things to do, to be more guidelines than rules.