In April, many deviantART poets partook in National Poetry Writing Month, writing a poem a day. But =MSJames decided to try something a little different for May. Why not write a haiku a day? He and a group of deviants did just that, but their writing exercise turned into much more. Not only did the participants come up with some delightful haiku, but their poems continue to beget more art.

One result of Haikuwrimo has been the Haikuwrimo Collection, a sixteen-page booklet available from CafePress. I ordered this collection, which features a charming cover by ~moyan, and found the selected haiku accessible and enjoyable. There is a nice range of content--humorous thoughts on slugs, captures of childhood moments, and of course, beautiful and fresh reflections on nature. It is well worth the nominal CafePress price, but the collection can also be downloaded here in =MSJames's gallery or in the following thumb.



Visual art has also stemmed from this project. ~moyan/~moyanII, who created the cover, has been hard at work illustrating individual haiku. She shows a great talent for translating the images evoked in the poetry into paintings, and has plans for a calender as well. You can read more about her artwork and find a list of haiku she has illustrated here and here in her journals.

Here is a small sampling of her work. The haiku, by `radiophonic, *Bogbrush, and *AbCat, are in the artist's comments.



Haikuwrimo was an exemplary deviantART project: participants had fun, practiced their skills, and created wonderful art. =zebrazebrazebra says of the experience, "More than anything else, I loved the way this opened my eyes. Walking to uni became a daily search for beautiful things to write about, and getting into the habit of constant observation was both indescribably useful and great fun."