Teaching Haiku

This year I started teaching haiku workshops, and so far it's been an awesome experience. I've had such wonderful students - friendly, engaged, curious and open to discussing and sharing ideas, and so supportive of one another. It's hard enough to take a poetry class if you don't know much about poetry, but then to also share your thoughts about poems and then write and read your own in class! That takes courage, and compassion, and every student has risen to the occasion.

An added bonus...I've learned as much from them as (I hope) they learned from me. I use certain poems in every workshop because they're good examples of topics I want to address. I've read these haiku many times and I have a handful of ideas about what each of them might be saying. Still, in every workshop I've gained at least one brand new interpretation or insight into these haiku from students who read them in a completely different way than I ever did.

That's the beauty of haiku. Each person who reads the haiku completes it in their own personal way, bringing new meanings based on their own background, culture, life experiences, world views. This is how there can be so many different poems living in one tiny haiku.

I leave you with this haiku I wrote some time ago. If you want to share your ideas about it,

I would love to hear them.

red wine stains on the tablecloth

all the things                              

she didn’t say