I don't just write the seed thoughts, essays and thoughts that you read here. My other love, my art, my craft, is haiku poetry. I write haiku every day. Here's the how and why of that.
How.
First, there are my tools. The simplest are a pocket mini Moleskine and a Fischer Space Pen, for walkabout haiku writing. For sitting in the garden or the field, under a tree, or on a rock, I will write in automatic pencil on my large [A4] grey Moleskine-type journal. I love to write my tiny little haiku in that vast white space of the page. I get to see the space between and around the words. I can write a few down, along with revisions and variations. If my iPhone is what I have to hand, then I jot down my haiku in SimpleNote app, which is great, because it syncs to my Mac for later publishing to my blog, a book, or other storage. Finally, my MacBook. A simple standard white MacBook. Running the bare minimum of software. I write in nvALT, synced with SimpleNote, so any writings are available on my iPhone too. I love to write in nvALT in full screen mode, so I have all of that wonderful white space around the words. Room for meaning to communicate to me. It's also how I like to present my work on my blog, and on the page, so it gives me a feel for the published word. I keep a poetry scratch file in nvALT that I can reach with a couple of keystrokes from any place on my computer, from any process, so if I need to jot down a haiku or other short piece immediately, I can.
In terms of revisions, I try not to work in terms of revisions, as I find that yet again, it is an intellect driven act. I don't believe that a good haiku can be written from the intellect, but only by direct translation of a moment, via the spirit.
One thing I have found, is that the best haiku that come, forming like living organisms in my mind, will engrave themselves on my mind as they write themselves. So I don't need to fear that I may forget the words that spring to mind. The only time that might happen is if I have driven a haiku from intellect rather than from a direct experience of the moment. This is the value of my Zenpractice.
But there is a stage before all of this. Incubation, and channeling. I walk, perhaps in the garden, perhaps along country lanes, perhaps along a mountain trail, a cliff or a beach. Often haiku will arise when I sit and meditate. Instead of getting frustrated with this, I see it as a gift and embrace the process. I don't write them down, I just let them go and leave them to arise gently, organically. Often a word or two, a clue, may arise whilst meditating, and upon reaching the end of my meditation and coming back to full senses, the whole haiku falls into place.
To sit down to write haiku, is a form of meditation for me. As welcome a bonus to my meditator's toolbox as it is to my writer's toolbox. I would write haiku even if no one were to read them, but there is such a thriving community of haiku writers and readers out there, that I need not fear that.
Why.
I first wrote haiku back in art school in the early 1980s. I would read Zen, study koans, sit and meditate, then write on a stack of loose leaf plain paper. I would paint haiga too, on those same loose leaf stacks. With the most minimal of materials, a soft warm shade of white paint and a soft graphite pencil. It was all I needed. A few years back, in 2003, I began to write haiku again, at my Zen blog, Blueskystudio. Sometimes a haiku, sometimes a photograph combined with a haiku. A kind of photo haiga, or visual haiku as I called it back then. I wrote these on an occasional basis, for a couple of years.
Then, earlier this year I found myself living in the mountains of Western Crete, stunned and inspired by the daily ever changing beauty of the White Mountains, regaled in their Winter coat of snow. I was moved to paint them. A vision came of abstract, minimalist paintings of these snowy giants, of their details, their spires, crevasses, their ridges and snowlines. So many visions filled my imagination to overflowing. But I had no paints, no paper, and no brushes. I scratched around and tried to find materials that felt right [artist quality materials aren't easily found here in Crete]. I had my last four Japanese brushes and a few precious tubes of watercolour in my favourite palette sent over. But no paper. I tried, and felt the frustration build as the unpainted images overpowered my mind's eye.
In that frustration, I found haiku again. I realised that I could paint my mountain abstracts in words, and my problem was solved. I began to write a series of mountain haiku. It just grew and grew, and became a daily practice, first, here in my journal, then I transferred them to my haiku blog, which in turn grew into poetri.es, my primary poetry blog, where I publish a single haiku, monostich, small stone or other short form poem each day. The mountain became haiku, the haikus formed a mountain, and now, I create haiku like breathing, like meditating. They just keep flowing. I was writing one a day, and publishing one a day. Now I am writing more, and publishing one a day on my blog, with unpublished pieces to be included in a book of haiku I am publishing in May. I have had one published in the book Pay Attention: River of Stones, and others have been submitted for publication at the present time.
If you want to go and read my haiku now, go and read my site, poetri.es.