Zahra Gordon

It’s been one (whole) year since I started the Haiku from the Headlines series. When I started doing the series, it was an effort to practice my craft from as many avenues as possible. I felt like I had been drifting away from poetry and needed to rekindle the relationship and put in the work – reading and writing – that would make me the poet I want to be. 

I had kept poetry off of the blog for a long time because I wanted to focus on having my poems published in journals – many of which won’t publish work if it’s been seen on your blog already. But I figured out that I could do still have work on the blog by sharing some things I didn’t intend to publish – writing exercises. In celebration of this haikunniversay, here’s a re-cap of the most popular haiku from the series.

What’s evident to me is that headlines and news in general are grim. And as I continue to read headlines, it doesn’t seem like the grim is lessening. At least there are poems to help us/me make sense of it all. See recap below.  

Consider her: threat

Black. Bruised blue, pleading. Later,