POETRY

I’ve always written poetry, but I first started writing haiku in Wales over 20 years ago. Maybe there was something about the combination of mountains and sea, ancient stone and cloud-veiled skies, towns not that dissimilar to the ones I knew as a child but speaking another language altogether. Whatever it was, I wrote my first haiku sitting in the shade on white sand in a tiny, deserted cove below the Portmeirion headland, and I’ve been writing them ever since.

I started to use haiku in my creative writing workshops because it’s easy to learn and fast to write but challenging to write well. This led to my learning more about haiku and related forms, and of course to writing more. Senryu are haiku-form poems about human nature: looking inwards rather than outwards, moments realised internally rather than observed. They are often ironic or comic.

As with most creative practices, the more I do, the better it works. I see more poems in everyday life – things glimpsed while out walking or half-overheard, sounds and even smells turn themselves into haiku, either on the spot in my notebook, seemingly without effort, or later, with much recasting. Thanks to the power of the subconscious, which never stops working, I sometimes wake with a haiku in my head.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with ‘found haiku’, looking at Shakespeare’s plays and identifying sequences that make haiku. I allow myself a little editing but no new words or structural re-arrangement. Like everything else he wrote, Shakespeare’s haiku are compelling, and they’ve inspired me to start a series of haiku based on his works.

I also write longer poetry sometimes, and I teach haiku workshops at conventions and events. To enquire about booking one, contact me here.