Gray sky full of clouds
Overcast and full of gloom
Until light breaks through
Overcast and full of gloom
Until light breaks through
Writing Challenges: Inspiration and ideas to spark your creativity every day
[Photo credit: Lia Chien, YWP]
Simplicity, observation, imagination. The time is right for haiku!WHAT IS HAIKU?
- A short form of poetry adapted from Japanese tradition
- Often, but not always, based on observations of the natural world, explaining a small moment
- Consisting of three lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables. A syllable generally corresponds to a single vowel sound within a word.
- Usually focusing on a particular detail, due to their brevity
- Usually written in the present tense, about the present moment
Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
- Richard Wright
WRITE!
If you can, find a quiet place where you can sit and observe, uninterrupted. Focus on a tiny detail--a color, a texture, a movement. Explore a few different ways to explain or describe that detail -- in just 17 syllables. Your poem could be strictly literal or imaginatively figurative. Try different angles. Try to pique your reader's senses. (And interest!)
