“Here in US schools, we are taught the haiku merely as the formula of syllables…”?-CogDog.

“Haiku have very deep system, but it can work for only Japanese language, so this Haiku will be litbit different style from Japanese language Haiku.“ -Komiyama.

“Sunshine when I sleep

Not now, Pikachu”


Sunshine by yeow_tuj via Share-Alike, Attribution CC Licensing. It’s my photo and I’ll do whatever I please with it!

I moved into my new apartment about 4 months ago, and while it’s awesome there is the slight issue of my sleeping area being right in front of a ginormous (omg this is actually a word?) window. The window’s frosted, but that doesn’t stop copious amounts of sunlight pouring into the room on sunny mornings and that’s what my haiku was trying to convey I guess. Everyone knows the feeling of not wanting to get up yet, but in addition to alarm clocks and lack of coffee I always feel that the sun itself is trying to slap me awake in the morning…and then when I’m actually up and conscious I look at my watch and I actually still had time to spare. And then there’s a huge Pikachu head behind me. I need my coffee.

As for the considerations I tried to follow the “rules” that I got from some related blogs (CogDog, Hamazaki, Komiyama, Lockman). Each of them brought something different to the table, which was nice when trying to compare and contrast and see what has to be done and what can be left open to interpretation…but at the same time it became a little confusing? CogDog and Lockman’s takes were quite thoughtful, with the former taking on an almost philosophical air and the latter being quite emotional/personal. Contrast this to the wildly differing styles of Hamazaki and Komiyama, wherein I found the former’s to be very instructional and insightful, almost rigid in its “professional” take (I wonder how long the post took..), while conversely when reading Komiyama’s haiku I get a very light-hearted, sentimental and playful feeling coming across that might or might not adhere as soundly to the principles of haiku, but definitely comes across to this uninformed non-Japanese as so much more engaging…on a fuzzy feline kind of level. I like cats, call me biased.

Going back to Hamazaki’s post however, I definitely found the write-up to be the most informative, with the general guidelines of:

1. Use three lines of up to 17syllables. (I split mine into 5/7/5)
2. Use a season word (kigo). (Sunshine in the morning? Maybe Summer-ish. As CogDog says, “…no idea where they fit in the Japanese seasons.” But then again as Hamazaki says, “almost all the nouns were categorized into one of the four seasons a hundred years ago, but we cannot do that any more in these days,” so maybe I’ll be let off the hook this time..)
3. Use a cut or kire (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) to compare two images implicitly. (The last line)

So in conclusion there you have my haiku. Maybe it’s off, maybe it’s not. Maybe Ben’s comment is right? What do you guys think?

“I’m not sure it’s the translation into English that a Haiku potentially loses its authenticity, but rather then different pace and tone that many westerners, particularly Americans, bring to the form.” -Ben.

From Tokyo we are seeing a nice ds106 activity surge in the Haiku It Up writing assignment created by Shinichiro- what is most lovely is how the author has elaborated on the meaning and structure of haiku beyond just the syllable forumala we learn in grade school here in the US.

Haiku, known as the shortest form of the poetry in the world, originally started in the 17th century in Japan. It became international in the late 20th century and now people all over the world make haiku of their own. There are several rules in Japanese traditional haiku and many of them are also adopted into the international haiku. The common rules are:

?Use three lines of up to 17 syllables.
?Use a season word (kigo).
?Use a cut or kire (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) to compare two images implicitly.

(From Wikipedia)

People often think that to express one’s feeling in the 17 syllables is enough for making haiku, but it’s not. The most basic concept of this poetic form is to resonate totally different imagery (often presented as nouns) and generate a new perspective/context/atmosphere/situation of the moment based on these imagery in the reader’s mind.

Okay, I am game. The ds106 assignment for Haiku it Up is

For the writing assignment, take a random Dailyshoot photograph and create a haiku using that image. Let the image inspire you to create a poetic haiku. Don’t know what a haiku is? The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn’t rhyme.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Three wine barrels stacked
Promise of divine innards.
Vibrant space between.

My two nouns are “barrels” and “space” (and have no idea where they fit in the Japanese seasons). I was thinking that in a scene like this we tend to focus on the objects, what is in the positive space, and the wonderment of what is inside the barrels, yet that bright light and the shape of the between space was really the thing that drew me to take the photo. This leads to my attempt to inquire how often we put attention on the negative spaces, the places between what we see and do.

I could have chosen a random dailyshoot from the big pool, and I have not done my own since a few months ago, but I was curious to use one of my own. This is how I used flickr to find a random image. I use the URL you can use to generate a flickr badge or widget- http://flickr.com/badge.gne. I selected an HTML badge and in step, for content, chose an image from my photo set where I stored all my dailyshoots

In the layout step, I select 1 image, and the option for random. The size does not matter, but bigger gives you a better look at the image:

Finally on the Colors screen, we see a random image as a preview. I can just command click it to open it in a new tab. That’s my photo!

There is probably an easier way, but this is how I did it.

What a great assignment to take something as simple as a haiku, add in the photo element, and take the haiku beyond just the syllable counting. Aiming for the nouns to contrast is really where the mini story comes into it.

You sitting there reading
This blog post on the internet.
Make some art, damnit!

A discussion in the comment thread from Nanami’s recent haiku made me think about points raised by several students who’ve submitted Haiku It Up assignments. Native Japanese speaking students have suggested that when written in English their work doesn’t feel like a haiku. This thinking brought two questions to mind:

• Can only a haiku written in Japanese be considered a “real” haiku? or 
• Are the students expressing a lack of confidence in their ability to manipulate the English language?

Today’s ds106′s assigment is making Haiku.
As many people know, Haiku is one kind of Japanese traditional poem.
Haiku have very deep system, but it can work for only Japanese language, so this Haiku will be litbit different style from Japanese language Haiku. However, it does not matter!!
Today I want to write about my kitty’s feeling!

central focus by Nanami Komiyama

“If you see my face
I’m sure you want to say cute
I love to hear that”

The description of this assignment

sounds like a movie title but its not.

??????????????

this means the memory I remember is the warmth of the white big land
I was inspired by this picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/44101777@N04/4241905167/ by Rubie B
this picture remembed me the days I had in canada
although it was really cold (like -30 in the winter), I remember the warmth of host family and the sun comes from close sky.

the following was added on 10/27
In order to put a picture here, I added a new blogpost here.
Although this is the different picture that I put the link above, this is also a great picture that I had seen it before in Canada.
Since the sky in here I see is very narrow, I cannot see it well and it sometimes has a beautiful color of change from purple to pink but it is not so easy to see it well.
I have a lot of things that I love about Canada. but the beautiful broad sky would be the top of the things that I love.

Image: Canadian Sunset by staciemorris through CC Licensing

Assignmnet description: Haiku It Up

This is for digital storytelling.
Assignment name is Haiku it up.

This picture is what I based for this assignment.

Here is Haiku

“Ice cream!?
Are you eating
Ice cream!!”

ah, this is not good Haiku at all.
I kinda confused how to describe Japanese traditional thing such as Haiku and Waka in English.
Don’t you think it is too dificult to do that?
Then I created Japanese Version for this assignment.

I picked different picture for Japanese version.
Here is what I picked.

and here is Japanese version Haiku.
?????(?????)
???????(???????)
?????(?????)

Finaly, its looks much closer to Japanese Haiku.

I decided to try the haiku writing assignment posted by anagahama.  I browsed the DailyShoot Assignments and found this picture, by colin.jagoe.  I think the way the picture was taken makes the tree look like it is sideways, or at least that’s what I thought at first.  Here is what I came up with:

Bark stretches over

Shadow in horizon peak

Ripple of water

Writing haiku’s are fun and relaxing I think.  I like the idea of using a picture from the DailyShoot to be inspired to write.  I did have to google “how to write a Haiku,” because I haven’t written one in many years so I needed to jog my memory.