Saturday, September 28, 2019


New Website

Hello everyone, I've just set up a new website and I'll be posting my content there from now onwards. You can continue reading my stuff at https://harishankaran.home.blog/  I appreciate it!

Sunday, August 18, 2019

My first french haiku


My first french haiku

        Reading manga is perhaps one of the few pleasures of life that I enjoy to the fullest; I've been associated with the anime world since I was in kindergarten ( I was able to watch some parts of Naruto on YouTube ) . Ever since then, I have tried to immerse myself in Japanese culture, or at least ( well, actually) the knowledge of Japanese culture. I've since come across the concept of the Haiku. It is a short but sweet type of poem, merely 17 syllables in the English system. I also happen to be learning French in school, so I though " Why not combine the two and........ write a French haiku?"

        Well, here's my attempt, but before that a brief intro on haikus. In the english verse, we typically use a syllabic meter; this just means that we count syllables. However in Japanese verse, they use a sound unit known as 'on' or 'morae'. Traditional haiku have three phrases, with 5 on, 7 on and 5 on respectively. A haiku usually contains a 'kigo', which is a word that contains the essence of a particular season. These 'kigo' are taken from 'saijiki' ; 'saijiki' are lists of 'kigo' ( the most common topics are the season, the heavens, the earth, animals, observances etc.) For more information, you can check out the list of websites I'll be attaching below.

Here's my french haiku, for convenience, I'll be placing the English version next to it but note that it won't fit the syllabic requirements for a haiku since the original is in French. My kigo (from autumn) is the milky way.
                                                                                                         
la voie laiteuse                                                         

regardant au ciel                                 
rivière d'étoiles, blanc                         
belle, vaste, divine                               


  the milky way                               

looking at the sky
river of stars, white
beautiful, vast, divine                                 




Recommended reading:
1.https://literarydevices.net/haiku/
2.http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonplans/pdf/dec05_unit/whatishaiku.pdf
3.https://poets.org/text/haiku-poetic-form
4.http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html
5.https://www.ahapoetry.com/aadoh/intro.htm
6. image : The Milky Way A- Koichi Hoshi, source - https://www.asianartscollection.com/p/1/The-Milky-Way-A-by-Joichi-Hoshi/298