Islamic Haiku Poetry
Sr Alif blogs
For Poetry Month, I had made Haiku poems with my 3rd Grade students during my Writer’s Workshop Program in Brooklyn. The challenge of teaching Haiku to students rarely exposed to poetry, and to throw this complex form of cultural idea seemed a bit too ambitious. However, the outcome was very fruitful, and not only did they count in syllables and be more descriptive with their words, but they wrote some beautiful, rich, cultural ‘thoughts’ that I never expected from these hip-hop Arab/Indo-Pak Brooklynites.
First, I had given them some simple information about Haiku Poetry. It’s interesting to note that this type of poetry is actually quite “Islamic” because it reflects on the natural world around us. I took them to the park a couple of blocks away, and they were so excited that they could learn outside the classroom! At the park I had them sit and observe their surroundings. They sat enjoying the cool breeze of spring, and the laughter of young toddlers, and the sound of icecream trucks. Then I asked them to think of three sentences that describe the scene of the park. What was happening, When it was happening, Where it was happening. For the first time, they seemed to see things they never observed before, even though they saw it everyday. They began to write furiously although in class they would whine and cry that they didn’t know what to write. It was easy to do because they only had to write three “phrases”, and then they were free to jump on the monkey bars.
In my next class, I made them review their poem, and see if it made sense. Then we talked about ‘tired words’ like nice and pretty, words that are over used. We changed these words by replacing them with more descriptive words (which came from a list I printed, or you could get them to refer to a children’s thesaurus).
In our third session, I encouraged them to write a new Haiku poem drawing from their own experiences. This became the most interesting part because they wrote from their own cultural backgrounds, and celebrated it in the form of Haiku. The last session, the boys wrote on a scroll, and girls wrote their poems on Uchiwa fans. The lesson can be found here. They dressed in Kimono, and recited their Haikus as ‘Ladies in the Japanese Imperial Court’. Afterward, they hung their master poetry fans on their class bulletin board.
Here are some of the poems by the boys. The girls took the fans home before I could document them :
Bosnia by Sulejman
Minty grass moving
Pigeons moving left and right
The masjids growing
Mountains of Yemen by Idrees
Men collecting stones
Earthy rocks on the mountains
People are hiking
Saudia Arabia by Abdel
The Arabs are nice
The Prophets used to live there
And have lots of snakes
I also did workshops with teachers on writing and publishing Haiku Poems. They learned to write Haikus and publish them on a handmade scroll. Here is one example. They were very creative as well. Kudos to all of you!
