Na Hai Wri Mo - Food, glorious food

That's National Haiku Writing Month and a challenge to write one haiku every day during February. They're only little poems and it's only one a day, so no sweat, right? Actually, it always surprises me how much discipline it takes to commit to adopting a new daily habit!  To ignore the voice that says, Oh don't worry, give it a miss today.

But Michael Dylan Welch's rolling project has Food as its theme this month. So how could I resist? Or perhaps it's more that as the hungry writer I feel I have a duty to participate! 

There's a daily prompt to focus and guide me. Today is Pasta. Tomorrow is Eggs. I hope there's roast chicken, chips, and chocolate in there at some point! 

I might get some good haiku out of this. I'll probably write some that don't amount to much. But I'll be writing, consciously. And in a direction I haven't dictated for myself - there are always discoveries to be made when I enter un-mapped writing territory. 

orecchiette
the waiter asks me again
which pasta I'd like

I think I'm trying to be too clever here: orecchiette means 'little ears' in Italian. But at least it's a start. 

spaghetti hoops
my grandson tries to convince me
he didn't do it

I'm trying too hard, tying the two halves of the haiku together with a band of iron, rather than a loose thread. Trying to get the idea of 'jumping through hoops' into the haiku. Haiku are light, fleeting moments captured, insights. This is clunky.

Oh well, there's the rest of the day. And maybe I'll have more luck with eggs tomorrow. And the rest of the month's prompts. 

Hungry Writing Prompts
Write a haiku. 
Write about eating pasta.
Write about following a map.
Write about cleverness.
Write about being lucky.


Comments

jem said…
I like the 'orecchiette' one. It's easy to want to be clever with haiku - I daily resist the urge to turn them into puns!

For me it's about getting them down and then sifting through - and sometimes realising that one half works but the other half doesn't and sadly sometimes never finding another half that does. I have notebooks full of halves destined never to find their perfect match!
Lynne Rees said…
Thanks jem. I have failed miserably in keeping to this challenge. I agree so much with your 'halves' comment. The most effective haiku I've written have been welded together at a later date from two disparate lots of notes. Making notes, for me, is the least pressurising way of preparing to write haiku. If I set out to write them they're generally over-wrought, trying to be clever.