December 2018

Let’s end the year with another Japanese poetry form…

August 2014

As promised yesterday I had a look at the lists of season words. My special interest is for those lists with example haiku to learn more about those who have written HAIKU much longer than me. These lists are called saijiki.

Saijiki in Worldkigodatabase

Therefore I visited the Worldkigodatabase to find out more about a saijiki. They offer a few for different regions which include keywords, explanation which season is meant, the word itself and an explanation what it alludes to. So far I found it a little confusing to navigate the page, but the vast amount of information about haiku and kigo is worth it to work myself through.

Saijiki on AHAPoetry

AHAPoetry offers several saijiki lists to all seasons ordered in keywords and just offer example haiku to each keyword. This I find really helpful and easy to understand, but the keywords are rather more human topics and not so much related to nature. That is probably not a bad thing as haiku are meant to reveal a human, spiritual or philosophical insight through images found in nature. There are though extra lists just about nature images. This is probably one I will work with.

Looking for more saijiki

Those two seem to be the ones who offer saijiki for the English language. There are a few for different regions which are in English as well, but I was more looking for a general list. Maybe that was the wrong way of looking. However, I will google a little more and see if there are others. I suspect though that it will need some time to develop saijiki in the English language as HAIKU writing is still a very young discipline in English.

Do you know any valuable saijiki on the internet? Please let me know.

bare branch

crows picking

in a deep valley

Resource: Worldkigodatabase
AHAPoetry