Martin Lucas, editor of Haiku Presence magazine and author of Stepping Stones, a way into haiku has kindly allowed me to reprint his enlightening essay. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, for the way it makes me reflect on my own haiku writing practice and question what I'm doing and why. Haiku as Poetic Spell Haiku as an English-language form now has fifty years or so of history. There have been many trials of new approaches along the way, and much has been learned. At the same time, it’s probably true to say that only a minority of writers stay the course. For many, it’s an enthusiasm that burns brightly for two or three years – sometimes with brilliant results – and then burns itself out, as the writer comes to feel that s/he has exhausted either the potential of haiku or his/her own potential as a haiku writer. One consequence of this turnover is that although individual writers may make great strides very rapidly, the movement as a whole evolves much more slowly, a...
Lynne Rees on haiku writing - creative and critical