Kathleen Elizabeth Sumpton
THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF HAIKU: 365 Haiku Poems is a poetry anthology for adult readers. It is a satire on adulthood in that the older we get, the less we live life in the moment.The design of this text is such that there are 365 poems, one for every day of the year. Instead of writing a book of poems for children to read one each night at bedtime, they are for adults to read one each morning of the year upon waking up. Setting a vision for your day, you are now conscious of each moment you’re participating in.A haiku poem is based on a single moment in time, and that’s what gives it personality. This personality is what will inspire you to live more in the present.The structure of a haiku poem is short, only three lines, containing 5 syllables, then 7, and then 5 again. This addition and then subtractionof an even number using a base of odd numbers also reflects the moral of this story in that balance is thought of as a binary, but in life there are much more than only two sides.Each poem was written by starting with a brainstorm on the most intense moment of the day. Every day, for one year, I wrote down the most intense moment or moments I had. Positive and negative. I scrapbooked each cardof moment(s) using keywords and images from magazines so that when I returned to them, I would have a lot of inspiration.Then, the following year, I turned them into haiku poems. This collection took more than two years to create, because after that I had to type them all up, edit them, and secure the rest of the book’s structure.This anthology is my gift to every adult who seeks solace in the art of poetry.
