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Andrew Shimield

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First Haiku

I first encountered haiku in my teens and instantly enjoyed them in a superficial, hippy, zen sort of way. But it wasn’t until about 20 years later that I took a more in depth look at them, when I enrolled on a local adult education evening course in creative writing.   The tutor was great, she took the view that she couldn’t really teach us ‘writing’, but she could teach us to be ‘creative’. Her course therefore took the form of a series of right side of the brain activities to stimulate the poetic genius within! Along with attempted past life regression, this included an introduction to haiku.  I feel she understood haiku well, She emphasised 5 key elements: nature, season, spirit, presence and  5-7-5. Here is my very first haiku: -

Out come the coats, gloves,
hats and multi-coloured scarves
 - the leaves have all gone.

Count those syllables!                          Any more first haiku stories... ?

 

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