Distillations: Scifaiku

Even during a leap year, February is the shortest month. For this month’s column, we will explore the haiku form, which is short by design. Unlike the miserable cold of February (at least for those in the northern hemisphere), haiku is delightful. Everything unnecessary has been pared away. All that remains are the seventeen syllables, more or less, that are necessary to convey a complete image, a complete story—or in the case of scifaiku, an entire world.

Traditional haiku consists of seventeen syllables: five on the first line, seven on the next, and five on the last. There is great controversy over this definition, as many consider it to be artificial, awkward, and an inaccurate method of translating this Japanese poetry form. Luckily, we will not be discussing traditional haiku and can thus ignore the argument entirely. Instead, we will be looking at scifaiku, which is a variant of haiku in which the themes are those of science fiction, fantasy, mythology, etc. In other words, this is the same speculative poetry which we have been discussing, but in a bite-sized format.

Danny Strack’s scifaiku in Vol 5, No 3 of Scifaikuest is a good example of the variation available in this form. His poem has a line count of 7/3/7. It is still short and provides one effective image which summons wistfulness in its final line, “this is my first time in space.”

Efrain Nadal De Choudens’s offering has a somewhat mundane beginning with the line “My first child,” but the ending provides a decidedly different twist with the description “With her two tails.”

By contrast, without the first line of Terrie Leigh Relf’s poem, the remainder could be mistaken for a traditional haiku, although the syllable count is 4/5/4. “The way dust rises / around his boots” provides a clear image and even the seasonal element or kigo.

It is this succinct moment of recall that creates the power in scifaiku, as it does in haiku. Thus the main challenges in creating scifaiku are the same as those in creating traditional haiku. However, at least one syllable must be reserved to ensure that the reader understands that the moment is out of the ordinary.

Often this different word is quite easy to spot such as the “alien” in Tom Galusha’s scifaiku. However, this otherworldly image begins with the mundane “reeds and tall grass boil.” There are many elements at work in this poem, as the ending provides a nice alliteration with “scales shine.” After hearing the word “alien,” the reader is ready to see these scales in a different light, instead of imagining more mundane lizards or even fantasy-derived dragons.

The last two poems in this collection also have just one line that separates them from traditional haiku and scifaiku, “Syrtis Major,” in Phillip A. Ellis’s poem, and “old spaceships,” in oino sakai’s. Of these, Ellis’s poem is the closest to traditional haiku with the line “blossoming honeysuckles,” while the poem by sakai is mostly focused on the sci-fi twist.

While there are many types of haiku, a common central theme is the element of nature. It would be easy for haiku purists to argue that these poems do not belong. However, by using the basic tropes of speculative fiction as a binding element, scifaiku writers have created a new genre that can take haiku into the stars.

[Note: The poems for this review were all taken from the online version of Scifaikuest. There is also a print version which contains a completely different collection of scifaiku. ]