Sound-Haiku: writing and drawing with sound

Inspired by Japanese haiku and everyday sound, this workshop invites participants to explore listening, language, and creativity through poetry. The workshop encourages deep listening, playful sound-making, and imagination.

Participants will take part in sound-based games and movement exercises, listen closely to small sounds captured by microphones, and create new onomatopoeias based on what they hear. They will read and reshape traditional haiku, and then compose their own "Sound-Haiku" inspired by sounds from their surroundings, memories, and imagination.

Participants can write their poems on small paper tags, which can be hung like tanzaku on a bamboo tree, or they can draw a representation of their sound-haiku as a graphic musical score, which can be displayed. Participants will have the opportunity to read and perform their sound-haiku to the group.

This workshop builds on successful workshops at Wellhouse Primary School in 2017, and in Libraries across Kirklees in 2019.