HAIKU

WHAT IS HAIKU? (www.wikipedia.com)

Is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan; Haiku originated as an opening part of a larger
Japanese poem called renga. These haiku written as an opening stanza were known as hokku and
over time writers began to write them as stand-alone poems. Haiku was given its current name by
the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.

HISTORY

Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral

poem, generally a hundred stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much
shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth century and was mastered a century later
by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku: An old pond!

EXAMPLE

HAIKU

5 syllables I was in trouble

7 syllables Of getting to know myself
5 syllables Until I love me.