Head and Heart Haikus - A haiku a day for the year

Last year I was given a birthday gift by my mother-in-law, a book of haikus.

I’d heard of Japanese haiku poetry however I wasn’t familiar with the structure and had never tried writing my own. I was used to penning stanza after stanza when the feeling moved me or pages of free form poetry that can take up to three or four minutes to perform sometimes, but there was something extremely refreshing about a traditional haiku’s seventeen syllable structure.

Stripping your words back to the bare essentials, I liken the art of writing haiku to that of painting with a limited colour palette. In reducing your options somehow, the art becomes richer and, in some ways, presented with more clarity. As an artist I’ve always been attracted to elegant simplicity and haiku is both these things and more.

The collection in this book is made up of 366 haikus, a haiku a day for the year plus a bonus one to even things out. Half the collection is based on what I call head haikus, observations, questions and my own mental health. The other half are heart haikus, observations to do with my feelings and emotions, pondering on family and those close to me. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which are which.