Shiki’s tips for beginning haiku writers
1. Be natural
2. Don’t bother about old rules of grammar and special points like spelling, kireji.
3. Read the old authors, remembering that in them you will find good and bad poems.
4. Notice that commonplace haiku are not direct, but artificially twisted out of shape.
5. Write to please yourself. If your writings do not please yourself, how can you expect them to please anybody else?
From “An Introduction to Haiku” by Harold G. Henderson. 1958
