Writing Haiku When You Have Aphantasia
2 min readByMark Farrar
I know I've had aphantasia since I was eight years old because I can pinpoint the experience that, with hindsight, made me realize that my mind's eye was blind. I may have had it for even longer, but I cannot be sure.
It wasn't until I was in my late 40s that I realized aphantasia was a real thing, and that most people could visualize images in their mind with ease.
And then, in my 50s, I discovered the art of haiku, about which I have become passionate over the past five years or so.
But, you may be wondering, isn't haiku a poetic form that relies heavily on imagery, given you only have a few words in which to paint a picture?
What I discovered, as an aphant, is that you don't need to have the ability to create mental images to write haiku.
It took me a while to put all the pieces together, and I eventually recognized that haiku not only survives without imagery but actually thrives on it. That haiku works at its deepest level,
not through mental pictures, but through attention, relationship, pattern, and the subtle emotional shift known as the kire (or cut).
That means haiku is fundamentally a poetry of perception, not imagination.
And that requires presence, a skill (e.g., attending, noticing, feeling the shift between two parts of a poem) is available to everyone, with or without a mind’s eye.
The same applies to reading haiku: you don't need to be able to recreate the picture that the haikuist experienced. Instead, you notice the structures, sensations, relationships between ideas, and emotional textures.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I also discovered that my aphantasic approach to haiku did not relate only to my passion for this art form - there are lessons about life itself.
If you're interested in learning more about my journey and my approach to writing haiku, as well as reading some of my poems, this is a great gateway page from which to start: