New to Haiku: Can You Write Haiku in the Past Tense?
On his website, Graceguts, Michael Dylan Welch shares a wealth of information. His essay, “On Writing Haiku,” gives 54 tips and suggestions for crafting haiku, including this one:
“Write about a now moment—here and now.”
He goes on to add:
“Writing about the here and now is always good advice, but I would not limit myself to that. Writing about memory is entirely valid . . . all haiku are moments of history. More important, I think, is for the poem to come across as a here-and-now moment.”
Haiku practitioners are often given advice to stay in the present to fully explore the “haiku moment.” In his book, How to Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2006), Jim Kacian writes:
“. . .The moment of insight in haiku exists, as we have said, outside of time—or said another way, time stops when we realize our moment. And because of this experience of timelessness, we do not conceive of things happening during such a realization in the past or future, but only in an eternal present . . . The practical effect of such a sensation is that we write haiku in the present tense . . .”
But do haiku have to be written in the present tense? New to Haiku reader Alvaro recently posed this question to me:
Is it possible to write a verb in the past tense in haiku and senryu poems? Does the tense of the poem always have to be in the present tense?
At first glance, I replied that while haiku and senryu are usually written in the present tense or have a timeless quality to them, nothing is set in stone (except perhaps for haiku engraved into rocks, but I digress). But I found the question interesting, and I’ve been thinking about it since.
I’ve observed at least three types of haiku which make use of past tense: “in the moment” haiku with past-tense verbs, haiku with “breathing room” at the end, and haiku in which a past experience informs the present.
Let me expand on each of these.
- “In the moment” haiku with a past-tense verb (or two)
dwarfed
by the trees I planted
summer night
I love the way Holzer’s poem—shortlisted for a 2017 Touchstone Award—places me in the stand of trees as she wistfully reminisces about a time before they had grown tall. The verbs “dwarfed” and “planted” are both written in past tense here (with “dwarfed” occurring a few moments ago and “planted” years prior) but the poem occurs very much in the present.
Similar to the previous poem, the use of past tense in Ruby Spriggs’ poem below serves to lengthen the haiku moment by making the present feel longer:
bird feeder untouched . . . alone again
– Ruby Spriggs, Honorable Mention, Harold G. Henderson Awards 1986
- Haiku with “breathing room” at the end
When I looked through my own published poems, I had to go back more than two years before I found one that I had written in the past tense:
our luggage carrier
saturated
with cat piss– Julie Bloss Kelsey, Haiku Dialogue, October 26, 2022
I will point out that even though the cat urinating on our soft-sided luggage carrier occurred in the past, our unfortunate experience occurs in the present. At the end of the poem, you are standing beside me, sniffing up at my car carrier, dismayed. This brings me to an interesting class of haiku: poems that have their “breathing room” after the poem is over, rather than within the poem.
Take the following haiku by Jim Kacian. It’s one of my favorites because it marks the first time I really saw the power in one-like haiku:
gunshot the length of the lake
– Jim Kacian, Second Place, Harold G. Henderson Awards 2005
The linear format of this poem draws out the gunshot (and the lake), but the experience is over quickly due to the lack of lineation or punctuation. In presenting the haiku in this way, Kacian places the “breathing room” in this poem at the end. The reader enters the poem in the ringing silence after the gunshot.
- Haiku in which a past experience informs the present
Another class of haiku with verbs in past tense are those which combine past and present experiences. Take, for example, Susan Antolin’s beautiful and touching tribute to grief in this Touchstone Award-winning haiku:
the mother my summer died
– Susan Antolin, Mariposa 49
Kat Lehmann explained the aspect of time in this poem to me in this way:
“[Antolin’s haiku is] an intentional re-mix of ‘the summer my mother died,’ which is something that occurred in the past tense. The haiku, however, is about the ongoing nature of grief into the present and how thoughts and everything re-mixes to center around that grief. So the poem occurs in the present tense even though this is outside of the syntax.”
The following poem, a Touchstone Individual Award finalist in 2017, achieves a similar disjointed feel through deft use of past tense:
as if nothing
an empty seashore
had happened
There are also haiku in which past and present tense occur simultaneously through use of an ambiguous verb. It’s not clear in the following haiku whether “you’re” is short for “you are” or “you were.” As a reader, I experience both simultaneously —the immediacy of grief and echoes of pain as the story is recounted. This poem was a Touchstone Individual Award finalist in 2011:
bare trees
the little room
where you’re told
So, to more thoroughly answer your question, Alvaro: yes, you can write a haiku in the past tense, but it’s not common. Perhaps we should refer back to Welch’s essay, “On Writing Haiku.” Suggestion #50 reads:
“Don’t be afraid to do something just because there’s a rule against it (but be conscientious and disciplined, not lazy).”
- References & Additional Reading:
Bennett, Brad. “‘Verbing’ in Haiku,” in Frogpond 47.2. Haiku Society of America, 2024.
Kacian, Jim. How to Haiku. Red Moon Press, 2006.
Reichhold, Jane. “Lesson 6: Verbs in Haiku,” in Bare Bones School of Haiku. AHA Poetry, 2001.
Welch, Michael Dylan. “On Writing Haiku.” Graceguts, 2017.
What do you think about writing haiku in the past tense? Let me (and Alvaro) know in the comments!
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My thanks to Kat Lehmann for correcting my grammar and letting me bounce ideas off her. Any remaining errors are mine.
Comments (9)
Comments are closed.
Dear Julie,
Thank you very much for clarifying my doubts with your interesting, enriching, and valuable article.
Best,
Alvaro
PS Thanks also for quoting my question
Dear Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez,
And I appreciated your unique approach to haikai verses, and tenses:
https://haikupoetwordsearch.com/2025/02/27/alvaro-carrasquel-gomez/
warmest regards,
Alan
(Alan Summers)
PAST TENSE: to be or not to be, it was:
translation is not an exact science or poetry.
It’s rare that a translator is beyond merely competant with a differently challenging language, and unstand its poetry, as well as being a poet themselves alongside other skillsets.
British-English, at least, as funny past tenses we might utter when talking about something even less than a second before. Where you could almost point and the action and tense is still in the present. Perhaps it’s heading towards past tense but not yet reached there.
.
past tenses, to me:
immediate, medium-term, less and greater past tense
e.g.
“Bill was jabbing his opinion at Mary.”
“Bill was jabbing his opinion at Mary!”
Was/is it present or past tense?
.
The form of the verb to be is am (contracted to ‘m), is (‘s) and are (‘re) in the present tense and was/were in the past.
Is it past tense because of “was” is before “jabbing” and therefore it’s in the past, but then jabbing, is it a present tense word (present participle ongoing present tense), so should or is the “sentence” past tense, and how far back, seconds, minutes, hours much longer such as years?
.
Japanese Pod 101
Japanese Tenses: Simple Yet Unique
July, 2021
“Did you know that the Japanese language does not have a future tense nor any perfect tenses like English does? Japanese tenses are much simpler to handle, as there are only two: the present tense and the past tense. However, there are some unique rules concerning tenses in Japanese that are quite different from what English speakers are used to.”
“How Many Tenses are There in Japanese?
Japanese has only two verb tenses, which are the present tense and the past tense. The present tense is also used to express things about the future in Japanese, so there’s no clear distinction between the present tense and the future tense.
Having said that, Japanese grammar technically does not treat verbs for tense. Rather, Japanese verbs take one of five basic conjugation forms and are followed by 助動詞 (jodōshi), or auxiliary verbs/post positional particles, in order to express and determine their tense.”
https://www.japanesepod101.com/blog/2021/07/08/japanese-tenses/
.
If you/we expand on ‘was’
.
e.g.
.
“…out of the primordial ooze as if it was only the day before.”
Alan Summers
that you will be afraid… (haibun)
Pan Haiku Review issue four – haibun & tanka-bun edition (Winter 2024)
.
and/or
.
The first ring was four years old,
I hear other people can remember earlier.
Alan Summers
Are you Mother-of-pearl?
Contemporary Haibun Online December 2024
.
“I wanted to get out, not feel I was rusting away.”
Pulpit to Pipit (haibun)
Alan Summers
Contemporary Haibun Online 20.2 (August 2024)
.
’Twas brillig the rising corn moon’s pale horse glimmer
Alan Summers
Publication credit: The Pan Haiku Review 1ssue May 2023
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I’ve been writing haiku and haibun etc… for over 30 years, so from that timescape ongoing, I say that we don’t have to worry, lots of us write in various tenses, and been published. The aim is poetry, and anyone who casts doubt on that or us, can be called a Thomas or Thomasina etc… :-)
I’ve just remembered another classic…
蝿打つまで蝿叩なかりし
hae utsu made haetataki nakarishi
Until I hit the fly, the fly-swatter did not exist.
Kawahigashi Hekigotō tr. Makoto Ueda.
Another translator, Hugh Bygott writes: “There are two verbs in this haiku. I consider the final verb as past tense with the suffix -shi. It is a verb with a negative component and an existential verb. There are two clauses linked by the particle ‘made’ which indicates a time limitation for actions or events. It is unmistakeably ‘until.’
I consider Makato Ueda’ s 1976 translation as faultless.
This haiku is gloriously and unmistakeably past tense.”
(Comment: this haiku is also a statement, something else that many contemporary pundits of English Language Haiku rush to deprecate. I have many, many classic examples of statement-like haiku in my files, some of them among the best-loved)
Great post and discussion in the comments. Thank you! And also, thank you Alan Summers and Keith Evetts!
Thank you so much for this! I loved this topic and an urge to try writing in the past tense. Why not??
Thank you Keith for more information.
I don’t know how many ‘other’ tenses I’ve used though it’s quite normal to speak involving past tense. and sometimes what appears to be past tense in spoken conversation is actually present tense. The quirks of the English language, and presumably not just British-English?
creeping sepia
a dog that outran
the wind
Alan Summers
First publication credit: Presence issue #71 (2021)
Anthology credit:
Fractured by Cattails
The Haiku Society of America 2023 Members’ Anthology
ed. Allyson Whipple
ISBN: 978-1-930172-22-7
This does feel like a reflective past tense, and is about my parent’s last ever dog, with a heart of gold, a Standard Poodle, and incredibly fast! :-)
The past tense in English describes what has already happened. How do we form the past tense in English?
We take the present tense of the word and add the suffix “-ed”
There maybe others lurking, of course, and I felt it was about time we played with tense a little more. :-)
Creeping Sepia:
My full saijiki notes for: The 1st Modern Kigo Competition (January 2022)
https://haikubasecamp.wordpress.com/2022/06/12/96/
One can argue tenably, whatever the tense in which a verse is written, an experience may have been in the present or the past when it was observed; is in the present when the poet writes it; and when a future reader reads it, it is usually well past. Apropos haiku dealing with a memory, Michael Dylan Welch writes: “It’s not the recency of a moment that matters, but its vividness. Besides, the moment something happens, it’s history—and really, all haiku are little moments of history.” English Language haiku based on memory alone were, until fairly recently, frowned upon by some; but I think that that discussion is now over, and they are broadly accepted. Occasionally, somehow forcing a remembered or past experience into the present tense seems unnecessarily contrived; less authentic.
I note that Michael goes on to support the use of the present tense when writing haiku whether or not the experience is in the present or the past. So do I: except that I suggest exceptions can and should be made. For good precedents exist both ancient and modern, where the past is more natural to the meaning. I think ‘the present’ moment should not be a hard-and-fast ‘rule.’ In his translations, I note that Blyth quite often rendered a haiku in the past tense where old verb modifiers such as ‘keri’ or contextual clues put them in a past or recollective tense. Blyth’s knowledge of both haiku and Japanese was outstanding, so his translations deserve weight.
keri (also a kireji)
One of the uses is given in Jisho dictionary as:
けり
Auxiliary verb
1. indicates recollection or realization (i.e. of hearsay or the past); can form a poetic past tense. Archaic
Auxiliary verb
2. indicates continuation from the past to the present. Archaic”
A Japanese colleague, a translator into English, notes that ‘keri’ is used in the present perfect continuous tense (comment: as in “I have been asking around”), but adds that in Japanese, past and present is fuzzy, and that modern haiku poets seldom use ‘ けり’.
keshi saite sono hi no kaze ni chiri ni keri
A poppy bloomed,
And in the wind of that day,
It scattered and fell
—Shiki tr Blyth
sôan wa nomi ka ni karite netari keri
I borrowed my cottage
From the fleas and mosquitoes
And slept
—Issa tr. Blyth
(however, despite the ‘keri’ Lanoue renders the verse in today’s present:
borrowing my hut / from fleas and mosquitos / I sleep
I ask you which is the more natural? Did —does— Issa write in his sleep…?!)
Ayu kurete yo rade sugiyuku yowa no mon
Presenting the trout,
I did not go in, but went on:
The midnight gate.
—Buson tr. Blyth
Nobori tatete arashi no hosluki hi narikeri
Hoisting the banner,
It was a day when we wanted
A gusty wind
Shiki tr Blyth Haiku p103
Kimi wo okurite omou koto ari kaya ni naku
Seeing you off
I had thoughts of grief,
and wept in the mosquito net
Shiki tr Blyth
white charcoal
in the Urashima tale
made him old
Basho tr Reichhold #90
michi-no-be no / mukuge wa uma ni / kuware-keri
a rose of Sharon by the lane
has been, to my surprise,
eaten by my horse!
Basho tr. Toshiharu Oseko
in Basho’s Haiku, Literal Translations 1990
ukareeda ni /karasu no tomari keri /aki no kure,” (5-9-5)
on a bare branch
a crow settled down
autumn evening
Basho tr Reichhold #120
aru tsukiyo / kotogotoku kago no / mushi wo hanatsu
One moonlit night
I released every last bug
From its cage
Shiki tr. Donald Keene
(aru a certain / tsukiyo moonlit night / kotogotoku altogether, entirely / kago cage / no possessive particle (‘their’) / mushi insects, bugs / wo object of action, or indicating time over which action takes place /hanatsu to set free, release)
…and some modern poems in the past tense have been published, for example:
A moment ago
There was just one icy star
Above that mountain
—Richard Wright
(The verse is in the past, but the poet remains in the present. This single-sentence haiku essentially leaves a cut at the end inviting the reader to add the juxtaposition, in the present, that ‘now there are billions’)
War stood
at the end of the corridor
—Hakusen Watanabe tr. Ban’ya Natsuishi
The War
in the dark at the end of the hall
it stood
—Hakusen Watanabe tr. Dhugal Lindsay
(A diehard supporter of the present in haiku could argue, I suppose, that ‘The War’ is still, as the poet writes, ongoing and in the present; or that war is ever present; but that seems stretched)
in the beginning
he was just pretending
to sound grumpy
— John Stevenson, Frogpond 45.1
(invites the reader to supply the “…but now…”)
Raymond Roseliep on past tenses: “Although the moment-at-hand is going to lead most of our haiku into the present tense, I see no reason why the past tense shouldn’t be enlisted when the poem simply works better that way. The past need not rule out immediacy. Haiku of Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki, and Company offer an abundance of past tenses, many of them astonishingly effective.” —This Haiku of Ours. Bonsai 1:3 (19 July 1976) (Roseliep might have been influenced by Blyth’s translations).
I whispered of death
one winter night in a voice
we both never knew
Raymond Roseliep, Haiku Journal 1977
while I study Zen
wasps built a nest
in the attic
(me) Asahi Haikuist Network 7 February 2025
Hi Keith: Thanks for your comment. I really appreciate you adding some historic context. I never thought about translators having to choose between past and present tense and how that might impact the haiku we see.