Hello everyone,

We’d like to announce a new facebook page that we made called Chanomi Talk. This is going to be a place where all the haiku that the NACOS community produces will be gathered and shared. We still want you to post your poetry here at nacosnagaya.org, but it will also appear there. In addition, there will be “challenges” and “contests” for you to respond to. If you are able, please include a photo with your poem to enhance and illustrate your meaning.

However, please bear the following in mind! We don’t want you to be discouraged from writing if you aren’t sure whether you’re doing it right or not. The most important thing is that you enjoy what you write. Please keep contributing no matter how bad you think your work is. We think poetry is beautiful no matter what. With that said, please view the following ‘challenge’ not as a competition against other people but as a personal goal to attain. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments section of this post.

Haiku Challenge 1

– Write a haiku poem in English that includes juxtaposition –

Traditionally, haiku include two parts separated by a breaking point called a “kire”. The two parts come together to form an image, and the relationship of the two parts is what makes the haiku interesting. In English, we call this sort of thing “juxtaposition”.

The challenge for this week is to think of an image and then choose two things in that image to become the two parts of your poem. One part should occupy two lines, while the other should occupy one. I’ll start us off:

under the sky
a cold windswept night
the moon seems hot

elements: cold night (2 lines) + bright moon (1 line)