Senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 morae. Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious. Unlike haiku, senryū do not include a kireji, and do not generally include a kigo, or season word.
Form and content
Senryū is named after Edo period haikai poet Karai Senryū, whose collection Haifūyanagidaru launched the genre into the public consciousness. A typical example from the collection: This senryū, which can also be translated "Catching him / I see the robber / is my son," is not so much a personal experience of the author as an example of a type of situation and/or a brief or witty rendition of an incident from history or the arts. In this case, there was a historical incident of legendary proportion. Some senryū skirt the line between haiku and senryū. The following senryū by Shūji Terayama copies the haiku structure faithfully, down to a blatantly obvious kigo, but on closer inspection is absurd in its content: Terayama, who wrote about playing hide-and-seek in the graveyard as a child, thought of himself as the odd one out, the one who was always "it" in hide-and-seek. Indeed, the original haiku included the theme "oni". To him, seeing a game of hide-and-seek, or recalling it as it grew cold would be a chilling experience. Terayama might also have recalled opening his eyes and finding himself all alone, feeling the cold more intensely than he did a minute before among other children. Either way, any genuinely personal experience would be haiku and not senryū in the classic sense. If you think Terayama's poem uses a child's game to express in hyperbolic metaphor how, in retrospect, life is short, and nothing more, then this would indeed work as a senryū. Otherwise, it is a bona-fide haiku. There is also the possibility that it is a joke about playing hide and seek, only to realize that no one wants to find you.
English-language senryū publications
In the 1970s, Michael McClintock edited Seer Ox: American Senryu Magazine. In 1993, Michael Dylan Welch edited and published Fig Newtons: Senryū to Go, the first anthology of English-language senryū.
' Journal of Senryu and Kyoka, is edited by Brent Goodman.
Additionally, one can regularly find senryū and related articles in some haiku publications. For example:
has regularly published senryū.
Senryū regularly appear in the pages of Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Bottle Rockets, Woodnotes, Tundra, and other haiku journals, often unsegregated from haiku.
