Happy National Haiku Poetry Day, everybody!
I’m not much of a poet (in fact, I’m not a poet at all), but I thought it would be fun (and possibly painful, for me) to celebrate this super obscure holiday by making some haikus using book titles.
This is basically the same thing as the book spine poetry challenge that’s been around for a while (I did that one, too—you can find that post here, if you’re interested), except all the poems I make must be haikus. So it’s essentially book spine poetry hard mode.
If you don’t know what a haiku is, it’s a special type of poem that consists of three lines, and each line has to have a very specific number of syllables. The first line has five syllables, the second seven, and the last five syllables again.
I’ve also worked in an optional points system, because I thought it would be fun. This isn’t a time-based challenge, because… well, I’m a book blogger, not a booktuber, and time-based challenges don’t work super well when you don’t have video evidence to prove that you really did time yourself doing the challenge. So instead, I’ve decided that I’m only allowed to make up to five haikus, and I’m not allowed to use any book twice. Other than that, though, I can use as much time and as many books as I want/need to create my haikus. Ideally, the haikus will make at least some sense, but that’s not something I can promise. The real goal is to use as few books as possible, because that’s where the points come in.
The points system goes like this: If I use six or more books to make one of my haikus, I get five points. If I use four or five books, I get ten points. If I can manage to make a complete haiku with the correct amount of syllables per line using only three books, I get fifteen points. And if by some miracle, I can manage to do it using only one or two books (without breaking individual words apart), then I get twenty points. So with a max of five haikus, there is the theoretical possibility of getting up to 100 points.
I don’t know if that explanation made sense, but if it didn’t, hopefully you’ll understand once I start showing you the haikus I came up with and tallying up the points.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Haiku #1:
The Son of Neptune
An Ember in the Ashes
To Kill a Kingdom
Number of Books Used: 3
Points Received: 15
Haiku #2:
Jane, Unlimited
The Chaos of Standing Still
Ready Player One
Number of Books Used: 3
Points Received: 15
Haiku #3:
The Giver of Stars
The Sun is Also a Star
The Chaos of Stars
Number of Books Used: 3
Points Received: 15
Haiku #4:
The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Little House in the Big Woods
Again, but Better
Number of Books Used: 3
Points Received: 15
Haiku #5:
Little Do We Know
Because You Love to Hate Me
The Girl in Between
Number of Books Used: 3
Points Received: 15
Final Tally!
All total, I used three books for all five of the haikus, so my grand total for points is… 75!
I had a lot of fun doing this, and I also made some pretty… interesting poems. I don’t know if this was interesting for you at all, but if you want to do this challenge, feel free! Let me know if you did by tweeting at me (my handle is @wavesofpages)!
Also, if you’re a booktuber and you want to turn this into a more traditional time-based challenge, feel free to do that as well!
Thanks for reading, everyone! I’ll see you next time!
-Ariel