I’m Jacqui Rowe and I’m a poet, writer of fiction and independent publisher. On an excellent online course led by the poet Wendy Pratt (wendyprattpoetry.wordpress.com), I decided to try to write a haiku a day, as a sort of journal for the whole of 2019. In May 2018, I was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia, a form of blood cancer. I’m not about to die or even be seriously ill but it has altered my life in some ways already, and I expect that to be reflected in my haiku journal.
Haiku is a Japanese form that has been adopted and adapted into English to the extent that it now bears so little resemblance to the Japanese original that we should probably have given it a different name by now. I’m taking haiku simply to mean a three line poem of
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables
I know some poets have a looser approach, but I find the syllable constraint encourages my creativity.
My other rule is to aim to write no more than one journal haiku per day, on the day (not a whole bunch of them that I allocate dates to later). I’ll post them a week at a time.
My most recent book is Blink, published by V Press. You can find out about it here http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/p/bookshop.html
If you enjoy the haiku, you might consider, if you are able to, making a donation to the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia Support Association https://www.cllsupport.org.uk/home or to Macmillan https://www.macmillan.org.uk/donate?gclid=eaiaiqobchmih6stqshl3wivd9mych1efw9seaayasacegjytfd_bwe&gclsrc=aw.ds
