Punjabi apt for penning Haiku: Expert

Ludhiana, Punjab: A seminar on Haiku was organised at Punjab Agricultural University by the Young Writers’ Association of the university.

Haiku expert Amarjit Sathi conducted the seminar. Apart from discussing the Japanese form of poetry that is rapidly being adopted in Punjabi, a workshop was organised for students to pen Haiku based on a picture shown to them.

Amarjit Sathi, a noted Haiku poet based in Canada, said he was inspired by Parminder Sodhi’s Punjabi translation of Haiku. To promote the form of poetry, he also brought with him a collection of over 120 books on Haiku. The books were exhibited during the seminar.

Sathi said there were a number of online poetry pages and around 2,130 members regularly contributed to the development of the Punjabi Haiku on Facebook.

He said Punjabi, having a rich vocabulary with words adopted from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindi and Sankrit, was apt for Haiku. It allowed the poet to be flexible and brief, as brevity was the soul of Haiku, he said.

“In English, for example, the articles are necessary, but these make sentences longer, while in Hindi people need to complete the sentence for grammatically correct formation. The flexibility in Punjabi allows one to be very brief,” he said.

The poetic form also appeals to the scientific mind, as Haiku is about writing about what one perceives and sees, rather than expressing opinions, he said. So many youngsters from the engineering and science background are writing Haiku, said Sathi.

An exhibition of free books was also organised. Dr Jagdish Kaur, president of the association, said they had been making efforts for people to exchange books.

“Knowledge should not remain stacked up in cupboards. So, exhibiting free books is a great idea,” said a student.

Source: The Tribune