by Melanie Jongsma
LANSING, Ill. (July 12, 2019) – Inspired by a special issue of “Morning Edition” on NPR, The Lansing Journal is inviting readers to tap into their inner poet and write some haiku.
The structure
You might remember haiku from grade school. It’s a Japanese form of poetry with a simple three-line structure—the first line has five syllables, the second line seven, and the third line five. The structure is simple, and somehow that simplicity leads to insights that can be very profound.
The topic
We’ll provide the same writing topic that NPR did: favorite summertime memories. You can write about childhood summers, last summer, or summer 2019. Since haiku are often very visual, think about specific images—camping trips, first jobs, rainstorms, fireworks, ice cream, whatever evokes summer for you.
Then choose just 17 syllables to convey that memory.
The instructions
We’ll accept submissions from now through the end of August, and we might begin publishing them online as we receive them, plus we’d like to include some in our August and September print issues.
Send your haiku to:
by August 31, 2019.
