I love poetry. I enjoy reading and writing it. One of my favourite poets is Rainer Maria Rilke. I can’t read German (although I studied it at school), so I have to read translations of his poetry. The translations are beautiful, so I can imagine that the original German is also beautiful.

I also like Japanese poetry, especially haiku and tanka. I have a book about how to write haiku in Japanese. It has a list of seasonal words in it. I learned a lot of Japanese vocabulary from the book, and I read many examples of Japanese haiku. I have tried to write my own, but they are not very good. When I read them to my Japanese friends, their reaction is usually “Hmm….”

So, I write more poetry in English than I do in Japanese. I sometimes write haiku in English, and I sometimes write traditional English poetry, but I prefer to write freely. I pick up ideas for poems everywhere. Sometimes, my poems come from a line in a song, or a conversation, or from a scene. Somtimes, the poem just appears in my head!

I sent some of my poems to poetry journals a few years ago. Unfortunately, the journals didn’t want my poems! They weren’t good enough. 😦

I guess I have to practice and study more.