As a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I am surrounded by folks who share in the joys and sorrows of being human, in the spirit of inclusion, in the practice of treating everyone with respect and dignity, and in the reverence of our natural world. It’s a faith that is open-minded and holds education and understanding in high regard.

It’s a place where it feels safe to be whoever you are but also a place where there is the expectation of and opportunity for growth.

I am constantly reminded, though, in this place of diversity and inclusion, of open-mindedness and understanding, that even we have a very long way to go. We need to grow in diversity, both our thinking and our actual congregation; we need to remember that there area wide variety of viewpoints that need to be recognized and heard; and we need to begin to expand our exposure to things we don’t understand or things we learned as youngsters that may have changed or not been fully taught at the time.

Today, the minister at our church told a story about a class that utilized haiku (and colored drawings) to illustrate The Trail of Tears. If you don’t already know about this devastating time in our history, here is a brief recap:

https://www.ushistory.org/us/24F.ASP

Her concern, as she understood it, was sound. As she explained, haiku is a Japanese poetry form that follows specific metered guidelines and typically is “about nature.” In her mind, it was not an appropriate way to illustrate such horrific and brutal treatment of Indigenous Peoples. The colored drawings were equally inappropriate; she seemed to be saying that it somehow diminished the experience of the people that suffered so greatly.

I need to stop here for a minute to explain why this particular story was a difficult one for me. I’m a writer. I have an MA in creative writing, write essays and books, and haiku is my go-to for poetry. I’ve written and published a lot of this short-form and used to teach it in a workshop. I have three haiku manuscripts that are in process, and two deal with issues of social justice and some of the worst suffering people in this world have endured.

When I go back and read some of my haiku from elementary and high school or peruse haiku sites on the internet, I am embarrassed by much of it. Japanese haiku follows a very specific form – in Japanese. Most people know about its three-line, 5-7-5 syllable requirements, but few recognize that writing in syllables using the Kanji of Japanese is vastly different from the writing in English. It is one of the differences that makes haiku adaptable to English. And haiku is not necessarily “about nature.” One of the requirements for this form is a “season word;” traditional haiku has very specific words that describe seasons in Japan. Because they are specific to that country and culture, they lend themselves to adaptation in other languages and cultures. Although it is important to include this reference to something representing the season, the poem itself is not always about nature. It may have many different themes: life, death, transition, etc…

As students, we are usually taught very simple rules about haiku (and so many other things) in school: I attended a college prep high school, and we learned that haiku was about nature and had three lines with 5-7-5 syllables. We didn’t learn about the season words (what they were or their purpose), and we didn’t do a study on how writing haiku in English was different from writing or reading haiku in the original Japanese.

There are a lot of disagreements in the world of haiku as to what is authentic, whether it is ok to adapt the form to another language/culture, and what is “proper” form. But it is a fact that this art form has been and continues to be adapted in our language for our culture.

I refer to the form I use as haiku, because I have adapted it from others who are well-known in this field. Most, but not all, of it has three lines. When I write in three lines, I use a very specific pattern for the form (another thing we were not taught in school), and almost always use an appropriate season word. While I do have a manuscript nearly ready for publication that has a nature focus, my primary work is as I described above, and none of the poetry is *about* nature. In fact, it is about torture and death and dying, as well as domestic violence, racism, and sexual abuse. I have chosen to follow a few of the specific guidelines for this form in all of my poetry, but there are a variety of adaptations among all writers.

My poetry, in all its forms, is about bearing witness to what is or has been, and nothing more. It is about capturing a single act – whether it is the genocide of a people, a bird’s song, or the assault of a child – and presenting it in a creative way that is both mindful and meaningful. It is written to be thought-provoking and ultimately, healing and transformative.

Our educational system does a poor job of teaching our children about haiku. Because of that, the poetry kids produce is likely to be lacking in substance and meaning. But when this artform is taught mindfully, with thought and compassion, it has the ability to communicate ideas in profound ways.