It isn't an original idea - I stole it from a book I got for Christmas called 'The Haiku Year' which had contributions from Michael Stipe and Grant Lee Phillips in it. But I'm writing a Haiku each day for 2008 (well, from 26th December 2007 to 26th December 2008) for two reasons. The first is for my daughter. The second is for myself.

A guy I worked with was reading a diary his father had left behind when he died, and he was seeing through his father's eyes the second world war and felt he wa ... more »

It isn't an original idea - I stole it from a book I got for Christmas called 'The Haiku Year' which had contributions from Michael Stipe and Grant Lee Phillips in it. But I'm writing a Haiku each day for 2008 (well, from 26th December 2007 to 26th December 2008) for two reasons. The first is for my daughter. The second is for myself.

A guy I worked with was reading a diary his father had left behind when he died, and he was seeing through his father's eyes the second world war and felt he was getting to know who he had been much better than he ever had during his life. I thought this was cool, and I wanted to do something that my 2 year old daughter could stumble across in 30 or 40 years time. But I'm a lousy diarist, hence the Haiku. It beats the hell out of keeping a diary anyway because it forces you to focus in on one defining moment of each day, an instance that sums up your life or your emotions at that time.

This is also keeping me writing. I'm coming out of a 4 year hiatus because of things in my personal life and this has been a good way into getting the brain back working on imagery. (After six months of Haiku I'm now back writing short fiction and my style seems to have developed because of the succinct nature of this poetic form).

I'm writing 'Western' Haiku - ie. not strictly sticking to exact syllabic requirements. I try to stick to around 17 syllables - but not always in the right sequence. Sometimes I'm one or two out. I tell myself if it was good enough for Kerouac...

And if I'm honest, I occasionally miss days and then do a catch up exercise a bit later on. Because of the nature of the project, some Haiku are better than others, some are quite personal and probably only make sense to me. So these here are the highlights, grouped together by month.  Less