Make poetry with a perfect stranger – with this haiku app

Photo credit: Pixabay.

It’s that heady season of blossoms in India and a line of poetry springs out of your fingers. What happens next is sheer magic. A woman in China picks up the thread and taps a few words into her phone. Then a man from the US adds a third, final line.

The result is a beautiful piece of haiku.

The app sees a line or photo being submitted every 7 seconds.

So how did these perfect strangers come together to craft a short yet uplifting poem? Through an app called HaikuJAM.

The social app makes it possible for three people to connect and create collaborative poetry and digital art. With words and photos, users can jam with both friends and strangers around the globe.

Here’s a delightful one I found on their home page (aptly pasted on a bearded old man’s picture):

“When little ones jumped on
Their old hearts
Their wrinkles smiled.”

The app sees a line or photo being submitted every 7 seconds. Each day, users open the app 15 times and jam for 35 minutes on average.

If you want to try your hand, today is a good day – it being World Poetry Day. HaikuJAM is running a campaign where the best ones will be published into a crowdsourced book of poetry.

Hello haiku

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Haiku is an ancient Japanese art of very short poetry. Today, it is a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.

But it is equally popular in English. And its creators don’t always stick to these metrical requirements.