Stella Pierides

Throughout March, The Haiku Foundation is featuring in its Per Diem, Daily haiku series my selection of haiku of the senses. Rich and sensual, these 31 haiku, by some of the best poets from all over the world, illustrate the interconnectedness of sensory experience. Read it and see how a particular haiku/senryu may evoke an image in one, dominant sensory modality, only to set off a cascade of associations in other modalities. For instance, while the sense of hearing may be in the foreground initially, eventually the senses of smell, touch, temperature, weight or time (or others) may come to be tingled. Uncannily (as we neither expect nor pay attention to it normally), in some way similar to synesthesia, a haiku/senryu gives rise to a 3-D, or multi-modal experience of the world the poet conveys. Read it and see! Every day a new poem; everyday a new test!

The Per Diem series can be read on the Home page of THF