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A haiku looks like the easiest poem to write. Three short lines, a few syllables, finished before your tea goes cold. That apparent simplicity is exactly why this format works so well for writing about the climate crisis, and why it is where I send researchers who tell me they cannot write poetry.

Before you write one, it helps to unlearn the rule you were taught at school.

Most of us were told a haiku has three lines of five, seven and five syllables. In English, that is a myth. Japanese counts a unit called the mora (in haiku circles, the on), which behaves differently from a syllable. “Tokyo” is two syllables to my northern English ear and four morae in Japanese. Anyone who insists on a strict 17-syllable count is being a pedant. Aim for 17 syllables or fewer, then stop counting and start noticing.

A haiku includes four things. The poem must be about nature. If it turns out to be about human nature, you have written a senryū, which is a fine thing, just a different one.

Every haiku carries a kigo, a single seasonal reference: a flower, a fruit, an animal, a festival that fixes the poem in one season.

A haiku is written in the present tense, a snapshot,...

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