To celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21st, we asked our followers on Twitter to send us their best haikus. Considering our dope community full of creators and artists, it came as no surprise that the Blavity Fam turned it out throughout the day. We’ve included some of the best haikus for World Poetry Day that were submitted to us. Not sure what a haiku is? We’ll also give a brief lesson in the art of the poem.

A haiku is a short form traditional Japanese poem. A standard Haiku is a 17-syllable verse consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. It’s a simple form of poetry that can easily fit into the 140 character structure of Twitter.

Haikus might seem basic or easy for people who are encountering them for the first time, but that’s not always the case. The haiku represents the art of simplicity in literature. On Twitter, it’s hard enough to have to write complete thoughts and ideas in 140 characters, but imagine having only about 30 characters to tweet with and then you can start to understand the challenge in crafting a beautiful and complex haiku.

The best advice I can give in going about creating your own haiku is to try to capture the essence of a moment or place. The most successful haikus are the ones that focus on the smallest details or ideas that we might overlook in our everyday lives.

These are examples that focus on the essence of nature and human emotions, but as long as it follows the basic 5-7-5 structure haikus can be political, funny or even downright ratchet.

As you can see in the awesome submissions above, haikus can be thought-provoking, calming, serious, funny and everything in between. It’s a great exercise to help you meditate on complex ideas and think about them in simple terms. We encourage everyone to try it!

Do you want to try writing a haiku? Tweet us or leave one in the comments below!

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