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For decades arguments have raged about the writing of haiku in English, with some contending that no “true” haiku can arbitrarily be converted into an English-language structure, both from the point of view of basic pattern or structure and the inability to assimilate fully Japanese identity and culture and the saijiki or seasonal almanac.

It was Masaoka Shiki (1867 – 1902) who gave the name haiku to the stand-alone hokku or “starting verse” of Japanese collaborative linked poems called renga. Groups would come together to write these linked-verse poems. After the foremost poet of the group, or the most distinguished member of the company, composed the hokku , the rest of the group would procede to compose variations. It was also Shiki who began to “reform” the haiku, but the major reforming elements came from his disciple Kawahigashi Hekigodo and later Ogiwara Seisensui. Parallel with this process of reform there was very strong conservative opposition from another of Shiki’s disciples, the conservative and very influential Takahama Kyoshi.

The essential elements of “true” haiku have always been seen to involve the juxtaposition of images, with a kireji or cutting word to contrast/compare events, images or situations (reflecting, on a small scale, for example, the turning point in a sonnet). An essential element is an implicit or explicit “cutting” (kiru). Such traditional haiku consisted of 17 sound units called on (also known as morae) in a 5-7-5 three-line pattern, containing usually a kigo or seasonal word to define the prevailing season. Among contemporary writers teikei (fixed form) haiku continue to reflect the 5-7-5 pattern, whilst jiyuritsu (free-form, or, as some would have it, “flexible or organic-style”) haiku no longer do.

Modern Japanese gendai haiku are increasingly unlikely to follow the tradition of 17 on or to take nature as their subject matter.

I find myself experimenting to an ever-greater extent with impressionistic contrasts, as I do in photography, selecting external images to reflect feelings that the images (their contrasts or contradictions) evoke in me.

I am not at all fond of titling these poems, but here do so merely for reference purposes. None of the titles, however, add anything to, or detract in any way from, the haiku variations.