The online publication Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine provides this brief set of instructions for writing haiku. The Pulse site also includes many examples of haiku. These instructions (and examples from the site) could be used in a variety of settings. For example, the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative teaches a session on writing haiku as part of it's narrative scribe training, a workshop dedicated to developing the skills of listening closely to a story, and then offering it back to the teller. Just as medical record keeping often distills a detailed patient narrative into the forms required for diagnosis and health record keeping, so too haiku can be used to distill a narrative into a gist. The contrast between what details might make it into an electronic health record and what details a haiku might focus upon can prompt discussion of what is left out of many clinical interactions. Writing haiku can also be a useful exercise in college courses. It is an accessible form of poetry to teach as one example and can prompt discussion of what constitutes a narrative.
Access
- Link: https://pulsevoices.org/index.php/haiku-rules-of-the-road
Details
Language: English
Type of Teaching Material: Writing How-Tos
Setting (class level or workshop): Community, Professional, and Undergraduate
Contributed by: Health Story Hub Team ( health-storyhub@uiowa.edu )
Citation: Whitman, N. (n.d.). Haiku Rules of the Road. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://pulsevoices.org/index.php/haiku-rules-of-the-road