[competition] Write your own haiku!

Day 1,680, 10:08 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Lord Frederick North

Ok -first of all, sorry everyone. Real life has snowed me under, and it's been 3 (!) days since my last proper article. Think of this as an apology.

So. Haikus. Ancient Japanese poetry. First, I'm going to tell you how to write them. Then you a) are going to write one and b) will get food for it.

Every peson who writes a haiku will receive 10 Q2 food (40 hp) for taking part. Then, I will judge them and awar😛

3rd place: 20Q2 (tot. 30)
2nd place: 50Q2 (tot. 60)
1st place 100Q2 (tot 110)

So the top place is worth 9x as much as the usual DQ!!!



How to write a haiku:

Most of you will know that to call it a haiku, it has to follow teh pattern:

5 syllables (eg/ "Rain on the treetops)
7 syllables (eg/ "The hurried wind, blowing in my face")
5 syllables (eg/ "Ah, feel the biting cold")

So all together, we have my haiku:

Rain on the treetops,
The hurried wind, blowing in my face,
Ah, feel the biting cold.

A rushed example but you get the idea.

Having trouble figuring out the number of syllables? Type it in here: http://www.wordcalc.com/


So what else?

Well, traditionally, haikus relate to the seasons, as in the example above (Winter). A haiku that does not relate to the seasons is a pseudo-haiku. For example:

Tyre tracks over the lawn
Horns blaring out at the night sky
Dark kings of the road

Here, I chose to write about cars -making this a pseudo-haiku. It also is not Kireji.

Kireji is where the poem is cut in half by something. Usually, either the first 2, or the last 2 lines follow one theme, then the poet switches to another theme. So

Rain on the treetops
The hurried wind, blowing in my face
Ah, feel the biting cold

Here, I have tried to use "ah" to break the poem. Did I succeed? You decide.



Over to you. Pleas note that taking haikus from the internet is cheating, and I will disqualify your entry if I suspect it is so. I am accepting pseudo-haikus, and those without kireji, but they'd better be very, very good.