This week’s prompt was based upon a workshop by our sister writer’s group in neighboring Hillsboro, Conversations With Writers. Their most recent workshop featured Maggie Chula, author of Living In The Moment: A Haiku Life and current president of the Tanka Society of America, a haiku association. She spoke about how to capture a moment, mostly in nature or using nature, to tell a story without describing the emotions. Called objective haiku, as opposed to directive haiku that describes emotions, the descriptions emote without the author telling you how to feel.

Another key to writing haiku this way is to have a surprise twist or ending.

Examples of her work included:

Warblers song
Welcomes me home
The prowling cat

Smell of Narcissus
My 13th Spring
And mother’s tumor

Sento Palace burnt
Again and again
Flaming azaleas

Our prompt inspired by her workshop was to not write in traditional and formal haiku as most of us are not trained to do so, but to use the haiku examples above to emulate haiku.

The prompt was to write haiku style in 3 lines beginning with the line Pebbles clatter.