What is Renga?

All those who follow my haiku posts have probably seen mention of renga before, or renku which is a specific kind of renga, but you may have no idea what those actually are. My apologies, I often throw around terms with little explanation.

With that in mind, friends, let's take a moment—or a few hundred words, whichever comes first—to take a brief look at what exactly renga is.

So... What is Renga?

Renga is collaborative or linked poetry. There are many forms of it but the most popular is called haikai no renga or simply renku. You may see this style referred to by the full name (haikai no renga), shortened to haikai, as renku, or even as renga itself.

Basically renku is a series of alternating verses between poets, each one playing off of what came before, either building on the previous verse or using the final few words of the previous verse to spin off in a new direction. It was very much a game and was less serious than other kinds of poetry. At least it was at first—it later also became serious business. But I'll spare you the history lesson.

How Does It Work?

The first verse (called the hokku) was composes of 17 mora in a 5-7-5 pattern. Yes, exactly like haiku. Haiku originated as the hokku verse of renga and continued to be called hokku until the 19th century when Shiki renamed it.

Wait... What's a mora...? A sound unit. Usually translated as syllable but I disagree with that. We'll come back to this later in the article.

The second verse would be 14 mora in a 7-7 pattern. It has a name, but I don't want to get lost in terminology, so we will just call it the second verse.

We could end there, but if there is a third verse it would go back to a 17 5-7-5 pattern. And we go from there, alternating between a 17 mora verse and a 14 mora verse.

The final verse must be a 14 mora verse. In other words, the renga must end on a 14 mora verse, not a 17 mora verse.

Commonly renku would go on for 36 verses. Other forms of renga could go on for even longer. But these days when we do renga or renku, we don't worry about such rules. 2 or more verses is what we are aiming for.

Let's look at an example I'm making up on the spot.

Verse 1:

midday sun
even in winter
I am hot

Verse 2:

beneath a tall cypress tree
rest and grow cold again

That slight comic suggestion of the second verse is no accident. Haikai no renga literally means "comic linked verse".

Counting Syllables

We might translate mora^† as syllable, as mentioned above, but that is inexact and I am not a fan of it. I wrote a post on it, in fact. Go read that post to see my reasons, but basically a syllable in English is longer than a mora in Japanese, meaning if we count the same number of syllables as they do mora the resulting poem is far too long.

In the example I gave above, you can see I did not stick to a hard 5-7-5 or 7-7 syllable count. I simply made them short. In Japan they say hokku should be one breath. The second verse of renga should also be close to that.

Now that is my opinion. In your own renga you can stick to counting syllables or not. Your call. However, as I mentioned in the article linked above if you want some kind of structure to guide you, I'd recommend a 3-5-3 syllable count for the hokku, and a 5-5 one for the second verse to bring them much closer to the original Japanese idea. But again this is very much your call.

Summary

Ok... that wasn't so brief. Maybe this will be: In summary renga is linked verse, alternating between verses of a short 3 line verse and a short 2 line verse.

If you are curious to experience this form yourself, we are putting together an area to practice the form at the Writers Block. Come join us and try your hand at it. More info will be provided in the Discord channel.

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Footnotes

†: Morae is an English linguistic term for the concept, which the Japanese borrowed as mōra. You might sometimes see haku or on (pronounced ohn) referring to the same idea.

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I post one photo everyday, as well as a haiku and as time allows, videos, more Japanese history, and so on. Let me know if there is anything about Japan you would like to know more about or would like to see.

Who is David?
	David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time.