Haiku is a traditional Japanese verse form, or the modern English-language imitation of the form. Usually, a haiku is a 17-syllable lyric made up of three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Haiku emerged in 16th Century Japan, developing from the earlier form known as 'tanka' which is a 31-syllable form that had been dominant since the 8th Century. Haiku can also be linked into a series to form a longer poem around a theme, this form is called 'haikai no renga', or more often, 'haikai'.

The popularity of haiku was spread in the 17th Century by Basho, a Japanese traveller and student of Zen Buddhism. Basho, the pen name of Matsuo Munefusa (1644 - 1694), is the recognised master of the form and is renowned for infusing his verse with subtle allusiveness, leading to the haiku being adopted widely as a discipline used in the teaching of Zen philosophy. Basho’s classic work, Oku-no-hosomichi (The Narrow Road To The Deep North, 1694), is an account of his travels to northern and western Honshu and is made up of haiku interspersed with passages of prose.

Originally, the haiku had been a witty poem, similar to the limerick of the west, which would be composed 'off-the-cuff' at court or around the camp fire, satirising an individual or a topical theme.

The influence of Zen transformed the haiku form into a method of creating a picture with words that somehow captures a feeling or an event that is subtle and transitory. Haiku from the 17th Century onward almost exclusively deals with the natural world and traditionally includes a word or phrase that symbolises one of the four seasons. This form of haiku flourished throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries and spread to the western world in the early 20th Century where it was adopted by poets, especially the group known as 'Imagists', who looked to the haiku as a model for clarity and precision of expression.