January 2012 NaHaiWriMo Writing Prompts
Selected by Annie Juhl, Svendborg, Denmark
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1 |
New Year’s day / beginnings |
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2 |
Friendship / family |
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3 |
Season words: Use your own personal, local words that indicate winter, January, or even the first week of January, if possible. See “Up with Season Words.” |
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4 |
Fur / feathers |
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5 |
Write about “here and now.” What do you see, hear, feel, think, etc. |
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6 |
Daydreams |
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7 |
Haibun prompt: I’m so happy to announce that Kat Creighton, without hesitation, agreed to offer the following piece of her prose for us to work with. For those of us new to haibun, please have a look at http://raysweb.net/haiku/pages/haibun-definition.html. Anyone is welcome to share further links on haibun. Please write a haiku in response to Kat’s prose. Enjoy! ;-)
With swelling clouds before them these Saturday afternoon drivers are all on their way somewhere. The traffic crawls. My eyes are beguiled by the shape shifting sky. My mood changes with the music on the radio and my mind wanders. The work left behind. The friend whose mother is ill. The husbands and wives still in love and those who aren’t. Construction always along this same curve . . . what is it they are trying to fix? Those who have passed and those still with us. Streaming sunlight unfolds from the smallest bit of blue sky. My mother always told me those rays were ushering souls into heaven. Still these dark clouds color my everything. And all these brake lights.
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8 |
Arms—legs—feet—hands |
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9 |
Vikings / pirates |
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10 |
Scent / smell |
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11 |
Energy |
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12 |
The Technique of Narrowing Focus: This is a device the Japanese master Buson used often because, being an artist, he was a very visual person. You start with a wide-angle lens on the world in the first line, switch to a normal lens for the second line, and zoom in for a close-up in the end. It sounds simple, but when done well it is very effective in bringing the reader’s attention down to one basic element or fact of the haiku.
the whole sky
in a wide field of flowers
one tulip
Copied from AHA Poetry, Bare Bones, Lesson 10, page 5. |
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13 |
Write about the number, thirteen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_(number) |
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14 |
Twilight |
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15 |
Haiga: Write a haiku to the following photo.
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16 |
Earth / ground |
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17 |
Music / song |
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18 |
Flowers |
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19 |
Food |
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20 |
Pain |
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21 |
Something soft |
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22 |
The sixth sense, or the fifth (taste) |
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23 |
Dragons |
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24 |
One-line haiku |
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25 |
Write a haiku where you use a metaphor. |
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26 |
Water |
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27 |
Light / darkness |
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28 |
Fire |
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29 |
Birth / death |
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30 |
Wind |
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31 |
One year with NaHaiWriMo or Circles: Write about your year, month, or weeks here on NaHaiWriMo. Or maybe you would like to share a special haiku you wrote here one more time. Alternative prompt: Circles. |
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