HAIKU DIALOGUE – Energy of Motion – Movement in Stillness

Thanks to Guest Editor Arvinder Kaur for grounding us at the end of one year & through the beginning of the next… & welcome to our first Guest Editor of 2026, Vidya Shankar, with a fascinating exploration of movement & stillness in the world of photography… happy writing! kj

Energy of Motion with Guest Editor Vidya Shankar

Photography is poetry in a different dimension. Just as a poet captures emotional vibration in time and space within the framework of words, so does a photographer through the frame of their lens, thereby freezing it for eternity. There is a certain meditative aspect to this capturing. It exudes the energy of stillness, but also of motion. Photographs, like poems, or any other art forms, move through time and space, through the years because of this stillness. Thereby lies the paradox that we can explore through our poems.

Prompt: Movement in Stillness 

A good photographer seeks to bring out the essence of life in all that they capture with their cameras, including completely static subjects. They understand that the stillness of a static subject is but an illusion; beneath it is a “chaos” that ordinary eyes cannot perceive. Still photography requires the photographer to be contemplative, sensitive to emotion, and to embrace their inner awareness. Photographers use techniques like long exposure, the symmetry of light and shadow, leading lines or diagonal compositions, or a low angle shot to create a dynamic energy in what would otherwise be just another picture.

If you were to study the photograph I have shared here, you will notice how the photographer creates a visual pulse of an unseen current. The play of light on the floor running parallel to the whiteness of the roof as well as the repetition of columns and the convergence of all these elements at the far end give this photograph a propositional balance, as if the photographer has arranged them for his benefit. The beauty of this photograph lies not in the skillful composition of the array of stone pillars but in what the photographer makes the viewer do – he makes the viewer’s gaze move through the stillness.

For this week, I am looking for poems that take inspiration from the photograph without necessarily making it an exercise in ekphrasis. You could also use some of the aspects of photographic techniques mentioned above as cues so long as your poem(s) echo the theme “Movement in Stillness”.

Just as how the photograph captures something beyond what stood before the lens, I highly encourage you to look beyond the predictable and the conventional. Seek that barely decipherable wave of tremor in what appears to be inert and unchanging. Transform the expressionless and the inanimate into something that is enduring and warm. Challenge yourself to make your pen trace out the words that linger in your inner stillness.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, January 17, 2026.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) In the Poem box, with your poem(s), please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

Join us next week for Vidya’s selection of poems on the topic Movement in Stillness…

Bios:

Guest Editor Vidya Shankar, Associate Editor for haikuKATHA journal, and author of two poetry books, is a writing coach, freelance copy editor, and an English Language teacher from Chennai, India. A widely published poet, her work has appeared in prestigious collections such as the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and the Poetry Marathon anthologies, and her haiku longlisted for the Touchstone 2024 awards. Featured in a unique coffee table book on 50 inspiring women of Chennai, Vidya loves singing, dancing, and making art. She finds meaning to her life through yoga.

Facebook: Vidya Shankar
Instagram: @vidya.shankar.author

Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Photo Credits:

Banner Photo & Prompt Photo credit:  Shankar Ramakrishnan

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.