Insomnia, Haiku Society, and Five Random Tips About Poetry

It's 2:00 a.m. and I can't sleep, so I am making productive use of sleeplessness and writing a new post.

After perusing the 2013 Poet's Market book, I decided to join the Haiku Society of America: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/.

After reading excerpts from Poets Market and Modern Haiku (another haiku magazine), I picked up the following tips:

1.) Most of the poetry publications that I read in Poet's Market want to view unpublished works. The magazines and journals want to be the first to feature your work.

2.) Poetry that is published on a blog or other personal website can be considered published, so if you have a poem that you want to send to a publication, don't publish it on your blog, as a facebook post, or as a tweet. (Oops.)

3.) If you feature your name in your blog title, there will be more hits on your blog.I may consider doing this for Marimba and Ice.

4.) According to Modern Haiku, contemporary haiku does not have to adhere to a strict 5-7-5 structure, and many poems that follow the formal structure are awkward.

5.) Another book on haiku is entitled How to Haiku: A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms by Bruce Ross. This book lives on the bookshelf next to my bed.

I hope these tips are interesting and useful for you.