For today's resource, I want to highlight the Haiku book in this excellent Read, Recite, and Write series from "Poet's Workshop" by JoAnn Early Macken – and when I visited her website to make that link, I was delighted to see that she has many haiku posts at her blog, so you can see how Macken herself practices haiku writing.
I have all eight books in this series on my bookshelf at home, and I was very pleased to see that the Haiku book is available to all at the Internet Archive, as are these other books in the series: Limericks, List Poems, Cinquains, Narrative Poems and Free Verse Poems. (The only books in the series that are missing from the Internet Archive are Nursery Rhymes and Concrete Poems.) You can get all eight titles as a bundle from Crabtree Publishing; I highly recommend this entire series!
These books are designed for elementary school students and feature poems written by young writers, along with poems by published poets. The books are very short, but they pack a lot of information on every page, and the design layout is attention-getting for young readers and writers.
The first page introduces readers to haiku, and the second page emphasizes the difference between this poetic form with prose and drama. I think that is very helpful... and not just because the haiku example here is from Issa, my personal favorite among the haiku poets. Take a look:
Each book in the series follows this same presentation model, with key information about the specific genre first, and then the poetry-prose-drama comparison, each time adapted for that specific genre of poetry.
The individual chapters that follow (each 4 pages long) focus on five different haiku writing projects: writing a sound haiku, a change haiku, a weather haiku, a question haiku, and a direct address haiku. Following those project chapters, there is then a chapter on revising your writing. The final chapter then has tips on performing your haiku both orally and in written form, including information about combining haiku with visual art and calligraphy (haiga).
I think you'll be amazed at what Macken is able to do with just 32 pages, and that is true not just of this haiku book but of all her poetry books. The Read, Write, Recite series is my favorite set of poetry-writing books for young writers... and for writers of any age. If you have time, take a look at the Read, Write, Recite books available at the Internet Archive; you might find another one that will inspire you! I highly recommend getting the actual printed copy of the book; sometimes the scans at the Internet Archive are on the dark side which means you don't get to see the vibrant and exciting colors that are an important part of these books' appeal. I cannot say enough good things about the care that has gone into both the content and the design of this series: well done, author and publisher!
