With the wrap up of this little diary only one day away, I thought it timely
to do some sort of reflection on what the experience has taught me. I say
little, but in actual fact this project has blown out into two hundred and
forty pages of photos, poems and ponderings throughout the year. From making
the commitment on January 1st to post a haiku each day, I wondered
if I would come to regret that decision and abandon the whole affair somewhere
along the way.
Even though I was forced to face the computer each day to produce three
lines summing up something from my day, the routine took on its own momentum,
helping me to reflect, find a moment, an image, a thought, a memory, and
encapsulate it in a handful of words. I have always tended to be verbose with
my writing, penning inordinately long sentences when a couple of lines could have
produced the same result, so having to restrict myself to three lines, and no
more than seventeen syllables, was quite a discipline.
But it was a helpful discipline, one that caused me to think about how
to capture the essence of something, get to its core, how to weave a few words together
to create a mental image with which anyone can identify.
Reading the works of what I term real
haiku poets, mine pale into insignificance. Their skill and artistry in
capturing a moment frozen in time never fail to inspire me, and I have far to
go if I wish to emulate their creativity.
After finishing my Haiku Project of 2017, a year-long poem and photo
journal, the idea for the online Haiku Diary 2018 was born, and I’m thankful
for two things. That I stuck with it, and that tomorrow will see it completed.
I’m itching to return to other forms of writing which have been pretty much
shelved for the past two years, though I have a hunch that not only will the
writing of haiku affect how I approach other projects, but that my thoughts
will often gravitate towards expressing myself in three lines instead of three
chapters.
Just one day to go
time for a new direction
think I’m haiku’d out
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