Haiku exercise for beginners

The haiku is about one moment, an instant in life captured. Where the poem is a painting, the haiku is a photograph showing the single comparison or eccentricity that makes nature so wonderful.
The advantage the haijin has over the photographer is that he is not restricted to showing, but can also let the reader hear and feel the image. Some haiku make comparisons from different times of the day or year, combining this into a single image. Where the photographer has a myriad of colour to work with the haiku poet can draw from a palette of, at the last count 450,000 words.

The strict form of the haiku may cause some people to baulk at them. Many beginners and young poets may well think: OMG! 5-7-5! Haiku are so hard! Well, if you subtract the five-seven-five format, and add a vivid imagination things suddenly become easier. The 5-7-5 form is not necessary to produce a haiku in a true minimalist spririt.

Minimalism dictates that you focus on one single image and allows you to make maybe one comparison. One method is to just think of a photograph of an animal, tell the reader what the animal also looks like, and where the creature is:

the [creature] [verb]
an [adjective] [noun]
[in/across/under/whatever] the [place/object]

Examples:

the cat snuggles
a smug cushion
in my armchair

the moth courts,
a doomed lover
to the lightbulb


This is a simple formula which, with a little wit, can effectively generate many freestyle haiku.

There are of course many other methods of producing haiku. But this method an almost failsafe starting point. Happy writing.