Haiga and Haiku

Featured Image Above: A Haiga, a drawing by my niece Kerri, with my attached Haiku

I’m a member of an on-line photography group, which has been interesting and fun for me. Each day we have a different topic/prompt to do, and yesterday’s topic was “Haiga”; Haiga is a style of Japanese painting that incorporates the aesthetics of haikai. Haiga are typically painted by haiku poets, and often accompanied by a haiku poem. Like the poetic form it accompanied, haiga was based on simple, yet often profound, observations of the everyday world. Stephen Addiss points out that “since they are both created with the same brush and ink, adding an image to a haiku poem was… a natural activity.” Well below I am sharing with you my response to the prompt. The pen and ink picture was painted by Carole in 1975(the year we met), and I wrote the attached Haiku in 2019.

Ivor Steven (c) January 2021