Saturday, March 16, 2013

Writing for a Prompt

There are two kinds of writers: those who can write for a prompt; those who have a hard time to do so. I belong to the latter. I write when an idea, an emotion, an event, an observation, or a piece of news hits me. Back in 2011, when I participated in the National Haiku Writing Month activity on Facebook, every day, I posted a haiku unprompted. I seldom followed the prompt given by an established haiku poet. However, I did write for themes for a couple of times, such as "the unspeakable body", a special feature of Atlas Poetica, a tanka journal. I did that because the themes had a very broad base and also I could take my time to ponder and better yet I could write up to ten poems. Happily, one of my tanka was accepted for publication for this special feature. Imagine how many parts and organs a body has that I can writer about! I think I can write for prompts only when I can take time to write and feel strongly about. That's right, when I feel strongly about something, I can write for a prompt for that thing.

Here is my first published haiku in English and in its Chinese translation done by myself. It appeared in Notes from the Gean 3:1 June, 2011. At the time Lorin Ford was the haiku editor of the journal. The publication gave me huge encouragement.

my childhood dreams--
steam from the wok
evaporating


我的童年夢--
水蒸氣從鑊裏
消失了

Here is my haibun entitled "Another Era" in Haibun Today, Volume 7, Number 1, March 2013:

Haibun Today

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