Book Description

This highly practical guide instructs readers on how to write haiku and senryu (the latter, humorous haiku). Haiku and senryu are short, insightful poems that capture the moments of our lives, whether happy or sad. Usually written in one to four lines, these challenging poems for their brevity and thought, are about nature, the seasons, and human nature. This guide dispels the many myths about them and instructs people on reading them with understanding and writing them thoughtfully. It also informs on how and where to get them published. Haiku and senryu are written worldwide in dozens of languages and are growing rapidly in popularity. The book teaches readers the basics and finer points of style and content for beginning and intermediate poets, giving a few hundred examples of excellent published poems, along with analysis of them. Also included, is instruction about haiku and senryu sequences, a series of individual poems with a theme. This guide offers the history behind these forms in the U.S. and in Japan, the latter, where they originated. Further, for educators of all levels and workshop leaders, it contains practical aids, outlines of study, lesson/homework plans, and samples of students' poetry. In addition, the book's highly useful appendices and bibliography guide readers to dozens of resources worldwide, online and in print, to increase their knowledge of the forms and offer publishing, networking, and contest opportunities. The book is written by Charlotte Digregorio, an award-winning author of four other non-fiction books, a prize-winning poet of many forms, including haiku and senryu, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Digregorio is Midwest Regional Coordinator of the Haiku Society of America. She has been a professor of languages and writing, a writer-in-residence at many schools, a conference speaker nationwide, and a teacher of younger students. She publishes papers in university journals on haiku and senryu, and her poems are often quoted and critiqued in publications. Her poems are exhibited in venues, such as public/academic libraries, cultural centers, art galleries, storefronts, restaurants, coffee and tea houses, and on public transit.