Haibun anybody?

Looking for something new to kick off your creativity? As a cure for procrastination or writer’s block try Haibun. Haibun  is the mixture of prose and haiku first featured in Japan through the travel writing and meditations of a 17^th century monk.

Since then, writers have found the haibun ideal for sharing thoughts and meditation, and for travel writing, autobiography and biography, descriptive and historical narrative.

Haiku is the Japanese poetry form now familiar to most poets and school children. It consists of three lines: one of five syllables, the second of seven syllables, and the third and last of five syllables. It is popular because it is fun to write in such well-defined disciplined way.

Haiku can start, end or indeed appear anywhere in the midst of a prose passage to intensify or give added depth to its meaning.

MuseItUp Publishing

Winter's Soul 
      

Patricia Harrington, an award-winning mystery writer, has taken the haibun one step further in her Gothic romance/suspense novella Winter’s Soul. Each section is prefaced by a haiku to entice the reader deeper into the story—a simple but most effective stylistic pattern.

Winter’s Soul is the  tale of an unusual ménage à trios, set in 1930s England. A mood piece, it proves the haibun ideal for building suspense and dramatic tension.

Haibun explained

In a hurry to find out more about the haibun and glean ideas before the book , published by Muse It Up Publishing, comes out later this year? Try the useful links provided by Ray  Rasmussen, the poet who has both led and followed the evolution of the form in contemporary English writing.


Using the haibun


I like the idea of using it for journaling or in my Morning Pages which I write at any time during the day to clear my head and to start covering the blank whiteness of that terrifyingly empty page.