Braided Haiku: Shaping Meandering Thoughts
Braided Haiku: Shaping Meandering Thoughts
by Pravat Kumar Padhy
In March 2016, I explored a new form of poetry, hainka, which is a poetic fusion of haiku and tanka. It is characterized by the image-linking of the fragment of the haiku as the ‘pivot line’ (kakekotoba) of the following tanka. Jim Kacian liked the format and archived the essay with examples in the digital library of the Haiku Foundation. Some of the hainka are translated into the Japanese language by Prof. Hidenori Hiruta and into Arabic by Dr. Mohammad H. Raisha.
Taking a cue from hainka, I experimented with the branched or linked haiku form in July 2021. Initially, I tried to entwine or weave together a one-liner and a normative three-line haiku with the fragment as the word phrase (the italicized part) of the monoku:
origami a paper boat with memories
a paper boat
I loop from one fold to another
Later, with minor modifications, I attempted to introduce it as braided haiku, a plaited form having a three-line haiku embedded within two short one-liners (monoku). The italic word(s) of the first one-liner acts as a fragment of the following three-line haiku. The second and concluding one-liner acts as a complement component with an overall subtle link and shift.
