Freestyle Haiku

Background

I started writing poetry to help me process and appreciate the heightened emotions I started to experience in 2010. While a traumatic event triggered these changes, I used the practice of writing poetry to focus my mind and allow myself the opportunity to reflect on my spirituality and humanity.

I decided to publish the poetry to a public blog (that I didn’t tell anyone about) to force myself to become more comfortable with sharing my emotional, spiritual, and sexual nature. After a couple years, I had hundreds of poems written and I started to share my work. I never stopped.

This project has shaped me as much as I have shaped it.

The Project

The majority of my poetry is short and haiku-like, but they don’t follow the traditional form that many readers expect. These poems are written in a free-verse style that I call Freestyle Haiku. I discovered the possibility of this more freeing style of haiku from the writings of the Zen priest, Santōka Teneda (1882-1940). He wandered and traveled during the later years of his life while writing haiku.

I enjoy writing poetry, because I can express abstract and powerful feelings in only a few words–free from a mandated structure. These poems are the most direct crystallization of my feelings and experiences, and the brevity of haiku draws attention to the exact words I choose…

But sometimes I write longer poems, too,

Which might be more like a renga, than haiku,

But this doesn’t really matter to me…

and I doubt it does to you. 😉

Not sure where to start?

• • You could start with those most recently written.
  • You could choose a chapter to start on.
  • You could start at the beginning.