The Haiku Project {guest post}

Today marks two things: one, National Haiku Day, and two, my first ever guest post on A Thought and a Half! I'm so excited to welcome Kayla Hollatz on the blog today to talk about a really neat form of poetry as part of my National Poetry Month series!

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Thank you Kate for allowing me to have a chance to connect with your readers in honor of National Poetry Month! I'm Kayla Hollatz, a twenty-something writer from Minnesota with a fierce passion for poetry. I've been writing ever since I could pick up a pen. I've been posting my poetry online for about two years on Tumblr. Many of my readers there know me by my pseudonym The Tall Twig. While I adore the writing community on Tumblr, I wanted to find a way to mix poetry into my personal brand on Twitter because it's such a huge part of who I am. That's when #thehaikuproject was born. 

Haikus are quite possibly my favorite form of poetry. I'm a short form poet, so I love saying a lot in as few words as possible. With haikus, you only have 17 syllables to pack a punch and convey your message. That's even harder to do than the 140 character limit Twitter already has! Because of this syllable restriction, I thought Twitter would be the  perfect place to share haikus. 

In the first week of tweeting my haikus with the hashtag #thehaikuproject, I had dozens of followers asking for more information on how to join in. Every week, hundreds of haikus started flooding into the hashtag from people all over the world. Some participants were poets, others writers, and some were just experimenting with the form and writing. It's been a really fun community and with April being National Poetry Month, it's a great time to join. There are no rules beyond what the form dictates. Simply write a haiku (3 lines with the pattern of 5-7-5 syllables) and include #thehaikuproject. Then press send and take a peek at the other haikus others are posting on Twitter through tracking the hashtag. 

For an example of haikus, here are a few of mine that I've tweeted:

Want to try writing your own? We'd love for you to join us! 

You can follow Kayla on Twitter and on her blog.