How to Haiku: The Next Level with Maeve O’Sullivan
Info
Date: September 29, 2021
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Duration: 6 Weeks
Cost: €165 (€150 Members)
All Irish Writers Centre remote courses take place on Irish Standard Time (GMT)
Course Summary:
Building on the introductory How to Haiku, this course will explore haiku and related forms in more depth. It will provide an introduction to four forms related to the three-line haiku: the tanka, the haiga, the monoku and the cherita. It will also explore techniques for writing better constructed and more striking haikai by answering these questions: should haiku be punctuated and how do we best do that? How can we effectively use metaphor in haiku and should it be explicit or implicit? What are horizontal and vertical axes in haiku and how do we go about combining them?
Course Outline:
What will participants be focusing on and when? – Detail main topics covered in course (or give daily/weekly session breakdowns of one line).
- Week 1: Tanka, the 5-line form related to haiku (also/formerly known as Waka).
- Week 2: Syntax & punctuation in haiku, plus the use of definite & indefinite articles.
- Week 3: Monoku (one-line haiku) and the use of spacing. Also cherita (6 lines in 3 stanzas)
- Week 4: Metaphor in haiku: whether to / how to: explicit or implicit?
- Week 5: Haiga, the form which combines haiku and images
- Week 6: ‘Wabi-sabi’, ‘mono no aware’ and horizontal & vertical axes in haiku.
Participants will be expected to produce work during or after the classes in weeks 1, 3 and 5.
Course Outcomes:
Participants will have a deeper understanding, not just of the advanced techniques for writing more accomplished haiku and senryu, but of four different forms related to the basic three-line haiku, and to develop an ability to read and write all of them with increased confidence and proficiency.
Maeve O’Sullivan’s poetry and haikai have been widely published, anthologised, awarded and translated. She is the author of five collections from Alba Publishing, the latest of which is Wasp on the Prayer Flag (June 2021). Maeve is a founder member of the Hibernian Poetry Workshop, and is a member of the Irish Writers’ Centre and the British Haiku Society. She leads workshops and mentors individuals in haiku, and reviews for various journals. www.maeveosullivan.com
