FROM THE LETTER TO MY AMERICAN FRIEND

" Still, haiku as a genre remains nearly invisible to the literary world!" you wrote. Yes, it is like that, despite the popularity of haiku. A paradox?

I think, the reason for such situation is exactly because we treat haiku as a genre. This practice came from the Higginson-US-military-Cold-War-school.
Haiku as seen in Japan is a form with many, many, many genres. So haiku is not genre but form. Form means pluralism of genres.
When we treat haiku as a "genre" we kill pluralism. That is the problem No.1. in today haiku.
"Genre" means "defined content". So poet has no free hands, he/she are subordinated to the limits of genre. That basically means that
haiku is mono-cultural poetry. Because the real meaning of multiculturalism is not "different countries" or "different races" but different ideologies.
(cultures are different because they were formed by different ideologies)
When we treat haiku as a genre we in fact do censorship. Haiku as an institution of ideological censorship cannot be an institution of poetry, that means
poets cannot really express themselves through the censored "genre". Poets who have something to say are chased away from haiku. The last one whom I met
was James Kirkup. I cannot consider XY as a poet even his formal skills and sense/talent are excellent. But he has nothing to say to this world - that is what poets usually do
and what poet makes a poet. And he is one of the most talented I met...
When I have to say something through the haiku I am automatically censored. Day by day, attempt by attempt. Why nobody speaks about? That is the problem. The editors do not want to publish
poems because "it is not haiku." The problem that faces work of Tohta Kaneko, Ban'ya Natsuishi... not only myself.

Dimitar Anakiev