Featured Writer: Dian Duchin Reed

First-person reflections on the arts of haibun and haiga

The bare bones of the matter are these:

A haibun consists of a title, prose, and haiku.
A haiga comprises an image and a haiku.

These parts, as I say, are the bare bones. The meat is the content you dress them in. Ultimately, though, it’s the inspired juxtaposition of these parts that provides the magic—the breath of life, if you will.

Creating haibun and haiga is an adventure, an exploration of the possibilities these hybrid forms present. What follows are some reflections on my own journey. (Do try this at home. Your results may differ.)

Haibun

For me, a haibun starts with the prose. Something clicks and starts me writing, knowing the entrance but not where the path will lead or how long it will take to reach the end. Next the haiku, one or more, which bounce at an angle off the prose. And finally a title that points obliquely to both prose and poem and calls out to the reader, “Come into the tent and see the show.”

Does it have to be true? It often is, but sometimes it’s fiction, sometimes it’s truth altered to fit. True or not, I prefer a haibun that happens here and now. To achieve this, I rely on the five senses, the present tense, and concrete nouns.

Memoir

Just on the cusp of adolescence, I went to a Saturday matinee in one of our town’s two movie theaters. On this particular day, I arrived a little late and the movie had already started, the theater dark. The haibun prose tells the tale. The haiku reflects what it means to enter a new phase of life—in this case, a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis. The wind holds its breath, along with the transformed being, unsure of what comes next. Finally, the title: The Blob is the name of the film, a description of the alien, and the vague and shapeless feeling of no longer knowing exactly who you are.

The Blob

Saturday matinee and I’m walking in the dark down the aisle when I look up and faint at the sight of my first alien. Somehow I make it to my seat, and after it’s over the young man in the next row flirts a little with me, letting me know he’s fresh out of juvie. Exciting? Scary? Who knows? A little boy—clearly from the naval base—asks me for the time and adds “ma’am,” which makes me smile? frown? So this is what it’s like to be a teenager.
the butterfly waits
for its wings to dry
the wind holds its breath

Nonfiction

I live on a street that leads from the local high school to a bus stop. Watching (and hearing) the teenagers pass by one day after school, I was struck by their individuality, as well as their shared journey toward adulthood. At the same time that they were discovering their passions in life, their bodies were on a separate journey of growth. The whole process reminded me of a hermit crab that’s outgrown its old shell and now needs to find something bigger to contain itself. The three lines of the haiku are braided into the prose, providing a kind of counterpoint. I chose “Three O’Clock” for the title because it’s the time school lets out and therefore sets the scene. It also represents the mundane, the everyday, as opposed to the miraculous growth and individuality of each of us creatures.

Three O’Clock

F-bombs explode all along the block, dropped by high-school students on their way—where?—home or to work or to hang out, all of them carrying something…
empty shell
carrying their black trumpet cases, their backpacks, their cell phones, their future selves…
the hermit crab
their future selves expanding daily, growing, exploding, barely contained by skin…
finds something bigger

Fiction (ostensibly)

Okay, I love crows. Many people see them as harbingers of death and ill fortune, but for me they’re intelligent, social, and entertaining. I have writtena lot of haiku with crows in them. Once, while taking a walk, I stopped for a while near a large group of crows perched on some power lines. They were cawing and clicking away, and I had the feeling that if I listened closely, I might be able to figure out what they were telling each other. I waited and listened, but remained clueless. So I wrote this haibun to fill in the blanks. The title came next, a nod to Matsuo Bashō’s haiku (“on a withered branch / a crow is perched / autumn evening”). This in turn led to the haiku, with its overtones of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (“The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough”), a little crow humor, and horrifying human lullabies about falling, not flying.

On a Withered Branch

Crow conversation, when translated, consists mostly of topics like current wind speed, reviews of nearby food options, and an embarrassing amount of people jokes. Some crows even compose haiku:
opposable thumbs
when the bough breaks
petals on a breeze

Haiga

Creating haiga (image with haiku) came easily to Japanese poets, according to Stephen Addiss in The Art of Haiku. “One reason that haiga have often been painted by Japanese poets,” he points out, “is that the tools are the same as in writing—brush, ink, and paper or silk.” Here is his list of the most important qualities of haiga: brevity, directness, naturalness, simplicity, and allowing the viewer to participate. “True haiga,” says Addiss, “does not invite comments like “What a great painting!” as much as “How delightfully the painting and poem interact!”

For me, haiga starts with the image. The medium I use is photography. Ever since receiving a camera as my tenth-birthday present, I’ve been in love with photography. Eventually, I discovered the joy of the darkroom, where the image can be manipulated in many ways. Now that I use a digital camera, Adobe Photoshop provides an exponential leap in image manipulation.

In photography’s earliest years, many artists saw it as a threat. Charles Baudelaire considered photography a product of industry, portraying not what one dreams, but what one sees. “And yet it is a happiness to dream,” he insisted. At that moment in time, he could not have imagined how photography would develop. And, of course, neither could Matsuo Bashō, who instead advised, “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”

I’m always on the lookout for haiga inspiration, ready to be hooked by something out there. I take its picture, play with its outline, color, background…. What is it saying? What emotion or story does it convey? Then comes a haiku that speaks to that emotion or story in its own way. Last, but not least, is the placement of the two, with plenty of white space for the haiku, so that image and poem can reverberate, resonate, and dialogue with each other.

In the following haiga, the image is based on what remains of a concrete ship built at the end of World War I, too late to have served. In 1929, it was grounded off Seacliff State Beach in Monterey Bay, gained a swimming pool and dance floor, and entered the entertainment business. Since then, numerous storms have resulted in its pier being demolished and the ship itself becoming a twisted shadow of its former incarnations. And yet, seabirds now find it an ideal roost. The situation reminded me of the hermit crab, happy to make a new and cozy home inside the left-behind shell of some other creature whose active life has ended.

In the haiga below, what started out as a photograph of a softly curved ibis and its reflection has morphed (using Photoshop) into something more sensual and dream-like, reflected in its accompanying haiku. When I graphically edit an image like this, logical mind yields to dreaming mind, and the result is not something I can anticipate. I knew I wanted to keep a hint of the reflections and the water ripples, emphasize the curves, and simplify the background. The wash of red was a game changer, leading directly to the haiku.

Tradition and Innovation

Pablo Picasso gave this advice: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” We can respect, value, and study what we’ve been given by our talented predecessors, and at the same time we can contribute to the future of the art forms we love by keeping them alive, vibrant, and responsive. It’s a journey well worth taking.

Credits

“The Blob” originally appeared in contemporary haibun online, August 2025.

“Three O’Clock” originally appeared in contemporary haibun online, January 2020.

“On a Withered Branch” originally appeared in contemporary haibun online, December 2024.

“hermit crab / embracing / the afterlife” originally appeared in DailyHaiga, May 1, 2024.

“loving / each curve / moonglow” originally appeared in The Haiku Foundation’s Haiga Gallery, August 1, 2020.

“the bay in winter breath taking the plunge” originally appeared in DailyHaiga, January 26, 2023.

About the Author

Dian Duchin Reed is an award-winning writer who began her career as a photojournalist and has published her work in American Forests, National Geographic World, and Garden Design, among other magazines. Her books include Medusa Discovers Styling Gel (poetry) and Dao De Jing: Laozi’s Ancient Wisdom (translated from the Chinese). Her website is dianduchinreed.com.

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