Pleasures and pitfalls in creating haiga

This haiga by Annette Makino was published in Contemporary Haibun Online in December 2023, and appears in her 2024 calendar of art and haiku. © Annette Makino 2023

ANNETTE MAKINO, HAIKU SOCIETY OF AMERICA NEWSLETTER, DECEMBER 5, 2023

You probably know the satisfaction of writing a well-crafted haiku, when just the right words in the right order create something greater than the sum of its parts. Now imagine that feeling magnified by adding a visual dimension, opening up an extra avenue of creative expression. That is the reward of creating haiga.

You will also find that haiga are more accessible to your cousins, colleagues or others who aren’t particularly interested in haiku. An arresting image combined with a few well-chosen lines of haiku is easy to digest without any knowledge of Japanese poetry. For many years I have published a calendar of my haiga. Sold mainly in grocery stores, bookstores and plant nurseries in my community, these reach hundreds of people each year who have no special connection to haiku, but who find beauty and meaning in the haiga.

“But wait,” I hear you objecting, “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body!” Fear not. In the Japanese tradition, haiga did not require any particular artistic skill. Though there were certainly practitioners who were great artists, like Buson, most haiga images were very modest. The creator’s sincerity and individual expression were key.

Also, with today’s availability of digital photography and photo editing apps, creating variations of haiga is more accessible than ever. (But note the hazards of photo-haiga, below.)

As haiku poets, we have learned that, typically, a key element of an effective haiku is to “mind the gap”—to create some distance between the one-line fragment and the two-line phrase of each poem, enabling readers to make connections themselves. (Of course, some powerful poems break this general guideline.)

The same holds true in the juxtaposition of the image and words in a haiga. Stephen Addiss has written, “In a fine haiga, the poem does not just explain the painting, nor does the painting merely illustrate the poem. Instead, they add layers of meaning to each other.”

However, in my experience, this is easier said than done. If the haiku doesn’t include a strong visual element, it is fairly simple to create some disjunction between the art and text. But if your haiku contains a visual image, as many effective poems do, and if you are using a representational artistic style, it can be hard to find the right distance between the poem and the art. On the one hand, you don’t want to make the connection too obvious; on the other, you don’t want to confound or disengage the viewer.

For instance, in a haiku about a fledgling learning to fly, pictures of birds immediately come to mind. But some other potential visual subjects that offer related but less overt connections might include feathers, fields or clouds. Even paper airplanes!

Correspondingly, if your artistic style is more abstract, it’s easier to create contrast between the text and art even if the haiku features a visual image. For instance, traditional Japanese haiga made of a few semi-abstract brushstrokes allow plenty of space for the viewer to fill in.

I find that many haiga using photos (known as shahai in Japanese) leave me cold; a photo can contain so much visual information that it closes down interpretations of the piece as a whole. But photo-based haiga can be successful if they use more impressionistic images like simple landscapes or extreme closeups. Photos that are manipulated with filters to become somewhat abstracted can also be very effective. And a more detailed photo can still work if the poem shifts away from it enough.

There is a lot involved in crafting haiga; I’ve only touched the surface here. But in the end, I encourage you to create what you want to create. Guidelines can be helpful, but don’t let them limit you. It’s all about the joy of expressing yourself!

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See the gallery of Annette’s haiga.

See her 2024 haiga calendar.

See an essay on linking in haiga by Michael Dylan Welch.

'Torn Together' : Annette Makino debuts new mixed media collages

Pictured is “Wind Blowing Upriver,” a collage piece by artist Annette Makino. (Courtesy of the artist)

HEATHER SHELTON, EUREKA TIMES-STANDARD, EUREKA, CA, SEPT. 2, 2022

Annette Makino has spent the last few years developing a new artistic style. The local artist, well-known for her Makino Studios line of greeting cards, prints and calendars, is now making Asian-inspired collage accompanied by original haiku.

“After 10 years of working with Japanese watercolors and sumi ink, and making fairly representational paintings, I was interested in exploring something new,” Makino said. “I did some online searches for Japanese mixed media and came upon a few collages that spoke to me. It turned out that one of the artists I really liked, Donna Watson, was giving a three-day workshop called ‘Wabi Sabi: The Spirit of Collage.’”

In February 2020, Makino flew to Tucson for that workshop, which she said was quite inspiring.

“Just a month later, the pandemic shut down life as we knew it and my Makino Studios art business slowed to a trickle,” Makino said. “Though stressful, this gave me the unexpected gift of free time, and less pressure to continue to create work in the style that my customers had come to expect. So, I was able to throw myself into experimenting with collage, with the Tucson workshop as a starting point.”

Makino’s new collage pieces are on display in September in a solo show, “Torn Together,” at Just My Type Letterpress Paperie, 235 F St., Eureka. An Arts Alive! reception is set for Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. (Masks are strongly encouraged inside the store.)

“This is my first show in four years, and I’m excited to share my new work with the community,” Makino said. “I love the process of gathering interesting papers, painting and tearing them and transforming them into beautiful natural scenes.

“Nature … is a constant source of inspiration,” she said. “I especially love the landscapes and animals of Northern California, especially Humboldt County. I have created collages featuring Roosevelt elk, Coho salmon, foxes and owls, among other creatures. You’ll also find ocean scenes, redwood forests, oak trees and blackberry vines.”

Makino says because of her Japanese heritage and having spent time in Japan as a child and later in life, the Japanese aesthetic really speaks to her at a deep level.

“I say my work is Asian-inspired for several reasons. It includes washi papers from Japan and Thailand and other found papers from Japan, like vintage handwritten letters or postage stamps,” she said. “Some of my subjects are traditionally Japanese, like cherry blossoms, a red bridge or paper lanterns. Each piece is finished with my red name seal. And I write a haiku that either accompanies each piece or is placed right on the art, following a traditional Japanese art form called haiga.”

In collage, she said, the most time-consuming part of the work is actually creating the papers.

“All of my papers start out white, and I then paint, print or otherwise embellish them using lightfast acrylics,” artist Annette Makino said. Here is some of the paper used in her collage, “Wind Blowing Upriver,” which depicts the Trinity River. (Courtesy of the artist)

“All of my papers start out white, and I then paint, print or otherwise embellish them using lightfast acrylics,” Makino said. “Any given sheet might have several layers of color and pattern. I use rice paper, washi paper with embedded organic bits, old letters, maps, book pages, canceled checks and even junk mail.

“Some of my tools are brayers, gel press plates, and brushes,” she said. “I make prints from objects like leaves, paper towel rolls or crinkled tin foil. Occasionally, I’ll incorporate some crayon, charcoal, pencil or ink. I’ve also made pieces that include found objects like feathers, willow buds or buttons.”

Once she has all of her papers ready, Makino says she carefully tears them into the desired shapes and glues them together to create her artwork.

“There is a lot of trial and error in this phase,” said Makino, adding that each collage gets mounted on a cradled birch wood panel.

In addition to her new collage work, Makino is still producing cards, and has 10 new designs coming off the press in a couple weeks.

“I choose a few collages that I think could be successful as cards — in some cases I tweak the art — and then I come up with words suited to occasions like birthdays or condolences,” said Makino, whose book, “Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku,” was recently honored in the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards.

For more information, go to makinostudios.com.

Local artist and poet wins international haiku award

HAIKU WINNER: This collage by Annette Makino is made from painted and torn Japanese washi papers. Featuring a view of the Klamath River, it incorporates her winning one-line haiku. 

MAD RIVER UNION, ARCATA, CA, APRIL 21, 2021

On April 17, Arcata artist and poet Annette Makino was awarded one of the highest honors for haiku in English, a Touchstone Award from the Haiku Foundation. 

Announced on International Haiku Poetry Day, the award recognizes the best individual poems published the previous year.

Makino wrote her winning one-line haiku while on a creative retreat at the Klamath River in Orleans last summer. It reads:

long before language the S of the river

Makino has a business, Makino Studios, selling her art and haiku in the form of cards and calendars in stores and online. A mixed media artist, she creates both Japanese watercolors and Japanese-inspired collages

She said, “I’m truly thrilled to get this recognition, especially because I’m celebrating 10 years as a working artist and poet this spring. It’s the perfect capstone to a decade of learning and growing in my craft.”

The Haiku Foundation site explains, “The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems recognize excellence and innovation in English-language haiku and senryu published in juried public venues during each calendar year.” 

This year the contest saw 1302 poems nominated from 31 countries, mostly selected by haiku editors. All the shortlisted poems are online at thehaikufoundation.org. 

Makino’s haiku have won many other awards and her poems and art regularly appear in the leading journals and anthologies of haiku in English.

She is currently at work on her first full-length book with the working title Water and Stone, to be published in the early summer. The culmination of a decade of painting and writing, the book will feature 50 of her haiga—artworks combined with haiku—painted with Japanese watercolors and sumi ink.

‘The ultimate affirmation’: Artist, poet Annette Makino wins a coveted Touchstone Award from the Haiku Foundation

This collage by Annette Makino is made from painted and torn Japanese washi papers. Featuring a view of the Klamath River, it incorporates her winning one-line haiku.

BY HEATHER SHELTON, TIMES-STANDARD, EUREKA, CA, APRIL 25, 2021

April 17 was International Haiku Poetry Day and, on that day, artist and poet Annette Makino received exciting news.

Makino, of Arcata, was awarded one of the highest honors for English-language haiku, a Touchstone Award from the Haiku Foundation. The annual award recognizes the best individual poems published each previous year.

“I’m thrilled that my haiku has won this award,” Makino said. “You should have heard the whooping from my house! I’ve been studying and writing haiku for 10 years now, and this feels like the ultimate affirmation that I’m getting the hang of it.”

This year, there were 1,302 poems nominated from 31 countries for the Touchstone Award.

“The Touchstone Award is unique as far as I know in that the poems must have won an award or been selected for publication before they can even be considered for nomination,” Makino said. “And most of the nominations come from haiku editors, not the poets themselves. So, it’s really the creme de la creme of all the haiku written in English that year. My husband refers to it as the Nobel Prize for haiku.”

Makino says her haiku was eligible to be nominated because it won the Porad Haiku Award sponsored by Haiku Northwest last fall. To read all of the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems winners for 2020, go to https://thehaikufoundation.org/touchstone-awards-for-individual-poems-2020.

Makino — whose work regularly appears in the leading journals and anthologies of haiku in English — wrote her Touchstone Award-winning one-line haiku while on a recent creative retreat at the Klamath River in Orleans. It reads:

long before language the S of the river

“I was walking along Ishi Pishi Road with my husband during a weeklong vacation/art retreat last summer. I looked down at the Klamath River, which parallels the road, and saw a beautiful S-shaped curve,” Makino said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has gotten me thinking about big questions like human existence and mortality,” she added. “It occurred to me that the river was flowing long before our species came along, and will continue to flow long after our extinction. When I feel too caught up in our human dramas, there is something comforting in that knowledge.”

Artist and haiku poet Annette Makino is at work in her studio. (Photo by Brandi Easter)

Makino — whose haiku have won many other awards — first got involved with writing haiku in 2010 when her friend, Amy Uyeki, gave her a book that she and her mother had produced featuring poems by Uyeki’s Japanese grandmother.

“This introduced me to haiku and senryu, haiku’s humorous cousin,” Makino said. “From Amy, I also learned about the Japanese tradition of haiga, art combined with haiku. I soon started experimenting with writing my own poems and painting haiga.”

Makino says she loves how a haiku can convey so much in three lines or fewer.

“It’s a deceptively simple art form with great depth that rewards re-reading,” she said. “And in describing a unique personal experience or observation, a good haiku can connect to something universal. There is an intangible exchange between the poet and the reader.

“Most of us are sadly mis-taught that an English-language haiku needs to follow a five-seven-five syllable pattern,” she said. “In fact, that formula is based on a misunderstanding of how Japanese sound-syllables relate to English. Most serious haiku poets don’t follow this syllable count, writing shorter poems that more closely match the feel of Japanese haiku. There are other aspects of a haiku that are much more important and harder to master, such as the juxtaposition of two images or ideas.”

For the past decade, Makino has also run her business, Makino Studios, through which she sells her art (both Japanese watercolors and Japanese-inspired collages) and haiku in the form of cards and calendars in stores and online. She hopes to participate — as in years past — in some fairs and festivals in late 2021 if it is safe to do so.

“This past year, I have focused on creating collages using Japanese washi papers that I paint and other found papers like old letters, book pages, vintage stamps and maps,” she said. “I’m also having fun incorporating natural objects like feathers or sand dollars. And most of my pieces include an original haiku.

This collage by Annette Makino includes her original haiku: “bright green needles/on the fire-scarred redwood—/what we’ve each survived.” It is made with hand-painted rice paper printed with redwood twigs and ferns, sumi ink, acrylic paint, vintage Japanese letters and glue on illustration board.

“When I’m creating, I love how things can come together unexpectedly,” Makino said. “There is a lot of serendipity involved, especially in collage. For instance, I recently created a collage to go with a haiku about a fire-scarred redwood. I was happy to find a piece of rice paper with a big streak of black sumi ink on it to represent the burnt tree, and I came across some other papers that I had printed on a gel press using redwood twigs and ferns. I tore a couple of hand-written letters from 1920s Japan into vertical strips to represent trees in the background. It was a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Makino is now at work on her first full-length book with the working title “Water and Stone,” to be published in the early summer. The book, a culmination of a decade of painting and writing, will feature 50 of her haiga, painted with Japanese watercolors and sumi ink.

“I’ve always been a bookworm and a writer. Even as a kid, I wanted to publish books — about what, I had no idea,” she said.

“My art business, Makino Studios, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. As I mark a decade as a working artist and haiku poet,” Makino said, “it struck me that I could capture the best of my creative work over this time in a full-color book.”

She added, “It’s been a satisfying process to go through all my art and haiku and decide what to include. After I chose 50 pieces, I felt that the rhythm of so many haiku in a row was a bit monotonous. So, I drew from the past 10 years of Makino Studios blog posts and wrote 15 haibun, a Japanese literary form combining autobiographical prose with haiku. These are short vignettes or essays that will weave through the book. It was a challenge to learn a whole new writing technique, but I’m happy with the results, as I think these pieces add a lot of texture and depth to the book.”

For more information about Makino and her work, visit www.makinostudios.com or call 707-362-6644.