by Alison

Last week I posted a review of Haiku Mama by Kari Anne Roy. It was a glowing review. I was so completely won over by this book that I found it hard not to gush about it.

Now I’m completely taken with its author. I sent her some questions and she sent back some answers that had me laughing at my computer screen. This woman is hilarious.

I’ve never used this expression before but . . . I heart Haiku Mama.

Which came first — motherhood or haiku?

Haiku came first! I think it was fifth grade when we learned the whole 5-7-5 routine and I loved the challenge. But I promptly forgot about it for, oh, a zillion years.

Then, while I was working as a marketing copywriter at a dotcom in the late nineties, I found myself in a cube of cubicles (”cube of cubicles” 5 syllables!).

In the middle of our cube we shared a whiteboard. No one ever used it, so I started writing a Haiku of the Day.

Mostly the haiku made fun of the brass. But they also made fun of work in general. Sometimes they made fun of individual people. I got laid off from that job.

Once I was laid off I kept up with my former co-workers by emailing out a Haiku of the Day to them. Then, as I got pregnant, got a new job, etc., the haiku became more about what was going on in my life.

Eventually, I stopped sending out the email and started my blog. By that time, the haiku were almost exclusively about my son, and the blog became more than just little poems. (Though the little poems are still a big part.)

Why do haiku and motherhood go so well together?

As a mom, I always want to record the things my kids do - I think every mom does. But there’s just no time.

I was terrible about keeping up with my oldest son’s baby book, and my daughter and youngest son don’t even have one. But they do have haiku. All of them.

A little 5-7-5 verse can be jotted down anywhere, on anything. I have sticky notes and scraps of paper and notebooks full of little haiku about the kids.

A lot of them (haiku, not kids) are just created on the spot while I’m blogging. After a while, you just sort of train yourself to think in 5-7-5, I guess. It’s a very organized way of writing for a very disorganized way of life.

Your haiku are really, really funny. Were you funny before motherhood, or did motherhood make you funnier?

Motherhood HAS to make you funnier, doesn’t it?

The things these kids say tickle me everyday. When he was 4, my oldest son once asked me - very accusingly - why I didn’t name him Power Pole.

My daughter - who is 2 - seems to have inherited my penchant for potty humor. “Where did you find that marble?” I’ll ask her. “From my butt!” she says. The scary thing is that I don’t know if she’s kidding or not.

When I was growing up, and through college and beyond, I was not the popular, shiny-haired girl. I was the triangle-haired, gigantic-glasses-wearing girl. I learned pretty quickly that if you make fun of yourself before other people can, it surprises them and they either leave you alone or find you silly and charming. Not to say I’m charming. I don’t know if poop haiku can really make someone charming.

You’ve got three kids, a 6 year-old, a 2 year-old and a baby. When do you find the time to write haiku?

Mostly, I ignore the kids.

No no no.

I just write when I can. For me, writing is kind of an affliction. If I’m not doing it, I feel terrible. It is a driving force, like eating and sleeping. I may have to leave the dirty dishes in the sink overnight, or forget I own an iron, but I will write. I will always write.

Haiku Mama was published in 2006 and you’re still writing mama haiku and publishing it on your blog. What keeps you writing haiku?

I keep having all these damn kids.

Again. I jest. Sort of.

Writing haiku has just become a way of thinking for me. It keeps my brain spry, it’s fast, and it can be really funny.

Plus, technology keeps offering me way to harass more and more people with my little poems.First with blogging, and now I’m testing out an experiment on Twitter.

I didn’t intend to write all my tweets in haiku. But now I’m trying to. It’s a great format for it. So anyone out there who wants to see if I can stick with it . . . follow me at @haikumama or

http://twitter.com/haikumama.

So far, it’s been easier to keep up with the haiku on my blog, but why not tweet, too? Any excuse, really, to avoid cleaning the kitchen.

haiku way of life

poop, snot and tantrums won’t stop

so I won’t either

Find Haiku Mama on Amazon:
Haiku Mama: (because 17 syllables is all you have time to read)