Haikuesday: Recap
Looking Backward and Forward
A New Haiku Dawn
In January 2017 I had this crazy idea: what if I wrote Star Wars-inspired haiku and posted them on the first Tuesday of every month. Thus, my Haikuesday series was born. Since the first Haikuesday was posted in February 2017, I have written fifteen other Haikuesday posts, the topic for each being chosen via polls on Twitter. Allowing my followers and others on Twitter to vote for each Haikuesday topic was a way to garner some fun and “fan”tastic support for the monthly series, and while all those who voted may not have gone on to read the haiku I wrote, it was never-the-less fun to know so many people were voting!
I am incredibly proud of the Haikuesday posts I have written, in large part because these posts have enabled me to explore my love of Star Wars in really unique ways. Never would I have imagined, when Haikuesday began, that I would have be scouring the Expanded Universe novel The Truce at Bakura for inspiration, or that I would be obsessively listening to Carl Orff’s O Fortuna (from Carmina Burana) as I wrote haiku about Darth Vader. I dug into my knowledge of the Star Wars: Uprising mobile-game (which I played obsessively before it was cancelled) for the haiku about Cloud City and was inspired by the poetry of Toru Dutt and Hindu mythology as I wrote about Queen Amidala. Long story short, Haikuesday has enabled me to explore not just Star Wars, but a wealth of other music, art, literature, and more in really interesting ways.
At the same time, the writing of Haikuesday posts has taken numerous forms, and happened at pretty random times. For many of the sixteen posts, I would work on the haiku over the course of the week leading up to Haikuesday. Sometimes my inspiration would come late in the process, and I would still be writing haiku an hour before I planned on actually publishing. More often than not, though, the haiku would be completed in advance of Haikuesday. As well, many of the haiku were first written by hand, and I have two notebooks filled with my Star Wars-inspired poetic creations. As I told my friend Kiri from the site Star Wars Anonymous (who write some of her own Star Wars haiku!), I often keep a notebook with me to ensure that I can write a haiku if it pops into my mind. And, in those moments when I do not have a notebook, my iPhone comes in pretty handy.
There are definitely some other little things about Haikuesday I could mention, but realistically, and for the sake of brevity, I will skip all of that. Like, you don’t really care that I wrote most of The Battle of Scarif haiku in the backseat of a car, Rogue One: The Visual Dictionary by my side, on a road trip from Detroit, MI to Alexandria, VA…do you? Naw, of course you don’t care, so I won’t share that with you. And I definitely won’t share that I wrote all of The Battle of Umbara haiku in a note on my phone (I remember when phones were just used for making calls and not writing haiku. Those were the good ole days…in the 1990s).
So, what is next for Haikuesday? Well, first and foremost, a much-needed creative break. I love rendering Star Wars in haiku form but my brain is tapped out right now. For right now – meaning for a few months – I am taking a break from Haikuesday to focus on some other Star Wars posts I have wanted to nail down for this site. In fact, now that this site is over three years old, I have quite a few ideas moving forward…including plans to FINALLY do Wookiee Week (but more on that later). As for Haikuesday, I already have some fun and innovative ideas to revamp it, changing how I approach it – from when/how I write, to the topics, and getting Star Wars fans (you!) involved in writing haiku! I even have this crazy idea to do an entire Haikuesday post in Aurebesh…
But all of that is in the future. For now, I hope you will take some time to read (or re-read) and share my Haikuesday posts. Leave a comment on them, tell me what you like, and if you have any thoughts/ideas on helping me make Haikuesday even more successful I am all ears!
Below are all of the featured images I used for every Haikuesday (with links to each post in the captions).
The Imperial Talker 