Four Chain Haiku | Shi Rensa Haiku

August 3, 2020August 11, 2020 Ronovan Haiku, PoetryFour Chain Haiku, Haiku, How to Write a Poem, How to write a Shi Rensa Haiku, Micro Poetry, Micropoetry, Poetry, Shi Rensa Haiku

Some of you may have noticed I created my own form of haiku recently. It’s not that I changed the number of syllables.

I simply made the ending verse, the third, of one haiku required to be the first verse of the following haiku in a poem containing four haiku.

(You can also do this with more than four haiku if you like as a basic Rensa Haiku, or Chain Haiku. I simply put it at four because that’s long enough for a story, but short enough for a challenge.)

This may sound like a haiku quartet, which I just discovered was an actual form, existed at 01:50 Tuesday, 7/28/2020. I’ve been using my style for a while now, created randomly with the first one I posted.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on haiku and other forms of poetry recently and I thought I would give this one a name I just don’t want people thinking I sought to pass one style off as another.

I first wrote, what I call Shi Rensa Haiku, one day when I thought it would be challenging to take a verse and make two Haiku that are unique but stay within the same message.

Here I give you the name I’m giving this style as it appears here on my blog, and among my poetic friends. The name is primarily to distinguish in case I have a reason to mention the name in our poetic circle.

Shi Rensa Haiku

Shi=Four

Rensa=Chain, connection

Haiku=Poem

From my understanding, you place the adjective of most emphasis next to the subject.

Here, the word Rensa means chain as in connection. and to me, that is the key adjective.

So, there is more behind the scenes in the development of this form than a row of numbers in red and black. But for the enjoyment of writing one, that row of numbers in black and red. is all you need. Some other day I’ll get into the rest of the story.

The way you write a Shi Rensa Haiku is with the following verse pattern with the like numbers being identical.
1
2
3

3
4
5

5
6
7

7
8
9

The goal is to have the entire poem deliver one message but with each haiku being a unique part/purpose within the poem and possibly having the story or message being told to progress with some purpose by the end.

Here is one I wrote recently as an example.

Loves anguish… thirst

I self-destruct when
your words are lost from my life
dread pervades this void

dread pervades this void
as my ego begs for hope
life devastates me

life devastates me
when your eyes embrace with mine
own these thoughts hunger

own these thoughts hunger
and thirst to demolish walls
for identities

The additional spaces you see between some off the words are the pauses I feel occur between them, giving that moment emphasis and meaning. This is a tool used in haiku when you don’t want to use punctuation or perhaps when punctuation doesn’t really fulfill what you want. It has also been used because haiku in the original form was written in one continuous line, not three stacked lines. With the stacked lines, there is a built-in hesitation/pause.

I hope you give it a try. It’s challenging to get one just right.

Another way to view the pattern that may be easier for some as not everyone thinks the same, especially when it comes to such restrictive poetry forms.

1
2
3 same as next line

3 same as the previous line
4
5 same as next line

5 same as the previous line
6
7 same as next line

7 same as the previous line
8
9