A haiku is a specific type of Japanese poem which has 17 syllables divided into three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Haikus or haiku are typically written on the subject of nature. The word haiku (pronounced hahy-koo) is derived from the Japanese word hokku meaning “starting verse.”

A haiku is traditionally a Japanese poem consisting of three short lines that do not rhyme. The origins of haiku poems can be traced back as far as the 9th century.

Non-traditional elements increasingly creeping into Western haiku include:

• Alliteration.
• Personification.
• Qualifiers – adjectives and adverbs.
• Puns.
• Rhymes.
• Metaphor.
• Simile.

These marks include the exclamation mark, indicating surprise or emphasis, and the question mark, indicating questioning or doubt. Both are relatively rare in haiku, but sometimes effective, as in the following examples by Ebba Story and John Thompson: jazz clarinet!23

Haiku often captures a moment in time, implying what happened both before and after that moment. To help imply this context of time before and after the poem itself, many haiku poets start with a lowercase letter and avoid ending with a period.

A haiku poem is a three line, one stanza poem where the first and last lines consist of five syllables and the second line consists of seven. It is acceptable to have multiple haikus in one haiku poem. It is also acceptable to slightly change the syllable count (so long as the middle line is longer than the other two).

Tanka (literally “short poetry”) has a long tradition in Japan. As a rule, one line of tanka has thirty- one syllables, which break down into five parts. The first and third parts have five syllables each, and the rest have seven (that is, 5-7-5-7-7).

seven syllables

The first difference between haiku and tanka is syllable. Haiku is composed of three phrases 5-7-5 and tanka is of five phrases 5-7-5-7-7. Secondly, haiku must contain seasonal words “Kigo”, and the image and emotion of each seasonal word affect the entire poem.

Tanka usually need no titles, though in Japanese a “topic” (dai) is often indicated where a title would normally stand in Western poetry. In Japan the tanka is well over twelve hundred years old (haiku is about three hundred years old), and has gone through many periods of change in style and content.