Irish Haiku Society |

Haiku and Hokku

Haiku (plural: haiku!):

a three-line poem containing a kigo (season word) and a kireji (cutting word in Japanese, or a pause).

Hokku:

traditionally, a first stanza in renga.

Before Shiki, the name for what we now know as haiku.

Senryu:

a poem dealing with human affairs, usually written in the same form as haiku but without a kigo.

Example. Classical Japanese senryu

A single ant

gets a good girl

out of her clothes

A baby born –

and as river-banks lie

man and wife

Sheltering from the rain,

the letters on the Buddha's forehead

I study hard!

Renga (linked verse):

a linked poems usually composed by two or more poets (5-7-5 and 7-7 onji).

Rensaku (linked work):

a bunch of haiku/tanka written around the same event/experience.

Gunsaku (group work):

a sequence of haiku/tanka written around the same event/experience.

Ginko:

a walk in the nature of a group of haiku poets.

Haibun:

prose by a haiku poet, usually intermitted with haiku.

Haiga:

a painting that includes a haiku, sometimes in calligraphy.

Example. Haiga by Kamome (Italy)

includes the following haiku by Issa Kobayashi:

Rare beauty:

the kite escaping

from a beggar's hut