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I had been writing poetry for quite a while before I came to haiku. At the time, I remember, I felt that I needed to tighten my poetry and the little I had learned about haiku suggested to me that it would be a good discipline, a way of focusing on the words, making each of them count. Haiku, therefore, was a means to an end for me and not an end in itself.

     However, as I worked with the form and learned more about it, I found it was very different from my expectations. I have no doubt that it sharpened my poetic skills. But not in the way I expected. Mainly, it taught me to be less fussy, less ‘poetic’ in my writing and to write in a plainer, more honest manner.

     Having said that, I have generally found the two forms of writing - my poetry writing and my haiku writing - to be very different experiences. Undoubtedly, others will have a different view or a different experience from mine. This, therefore, is merely a personal account that may prove of interest to some readers.

     For me, haiku happen almost immediately - the sudden recognition or insight, that haiku moment, if you like, the truth within things. I sometimes have to struggle a little for the words and usually have to play a bit with them afterwards, but it’s a pretty immediate experience. My poetry, on the other hand, rarely comes this quickly. Or as easily. I will often walk around with a poem in my head for days before I even try it on paper. The poem for me, needs to work on a number of levels. Metaphor, particularly, is important, as are word images and lyrical expression. While haiku often occur in the juxtaposition of natural events, poems can come from the juxtaposition of ideas. Poems, at least for me, happen more in the mind, in the realm of ideas. Haiku happen right there in front of me. I just have to be receptive. I approach the writing of haiku with an empty mind. I approach poetry with an idea or an image or a line that I want to explore mentally. Narrative too, can be longer in a poem. It can be sustained over several stanzas to create a cumulative effect. I enjoy the ability to tell stories this way, in my poems. Haiku can only capture the story of the moment.

     There are, of course, similarities too. Both haiku and poetry are poetic expressions. They are driven by the same artistic compulsions - the need to express an image, an insight or an emotion on paper. With the haiku this is unadorned, sharp, the thing itself. Whereas with poetry, I can use many forms and styles, I can use allusion and simile, rhyme and narrative techniques. But at the end of the day, it’s the same compulsion. And, for me, both require the reader to be complete. The reader brings emotional input, attention, sensitivity etc to the writing presented to them. Indeed, without a sensitive audience, haiku would appear unimpressive. I remember having a long argument on the merits of haiku with the Welsh poet, Tony Curtis, on this very point. My point being that he was insufficiently  sensitive  to  haiku  to  appreciate it. This is quite often the case. Poetry, too, needs an educated audience to be fully appreciated.

     So how do the two forms inform each other in my writing. Well, apart from the point mentioned above - the greater focus on realism, immediacy and plain language that the writing of haiku has brought me - I find the two forms very different writing experiences. I can sometimes steal a haiku (from myself) as a good opening or closing line in a poem or can sometimes link a number of haiku together to form an image poem. However, I can’t reverse this plagiarism. Haiku have to be found whole. Only sometimes will you find one lurking in a poem (or at least in one of my poems).
 
     The genesis of this article was a number of discussions regarding a poem I had published recently in Poetry Ireland Review (Issue 69). The poem was called Waiting for Hooves, was 28 lines long and set out in two stanzas. It was a complex poem which used an extended metaphor in the first stanza to describe an experience I had when a boy. A group of gypsy horses had got loose and came thundering down the footpath towards me where I was trapped between parked cars and a wall and hedge.

freezing me in the headlight of their eyes
as the great engines of their bodies
crashed through their gears

     It was the way the poem was constructed, the language and techniques used, that gave rise in the discussions as to whether there is a difference between writing haiku and writing a poem like this. For me there is, as I’ve tried to explain above. I’m not sure that I could have got the feeling of being in the path of a great engine (a train) in a haiku.

charging horses
frozen in their path -
the sound of a train

This doesn’t quite do it for me. Additionally, I wanted to develop the poem in the second stanza where I looked back at the exhilaration of that event from the standpoint of my daily grind -

I want that rush of noise that I felt as a boy,
something to pick me up and fling me
from the worn path of myself

I’m not sure how I’d have done that in a haiku.