How to Haiga

Post date: Apr 05, 2012 6:9:57 AM

Many haiga or photo-haiga posted online, such as on Facebook haiku pages, often seem to ignore or not be aware of a central technique for this rich and varied art, which is that the image and poem should not be too directly related to each other. I’ve written a short essay about this, “Linking and Leaping: A Haiga Primer,” which I first posted to the National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo) page on Facebook. And now it’s on the Essays page, also linked to from the Haiga page. This essay offers a basic definition for haiga, plus a mention of shahai, the Japanese term for photo-haiga.