Within hybrid writing, haibun provides an ideal laboratory to test new literary techniques and blend different styles into a single framework. Early issues of Contemporary Haibun Online and Haibun Today show the emergence of narrative, lyrical, speculative, and other now common haibun varieties. As poets tinker with new styles in fiction and poetry over time, new forms arise. However, in recent years, haibun innovation has accelerated.

To focus on recent developments available online, this Guide is limited to haibun published within the past six years (2020-2025 inclusive), in the following online venues:

1. #FemKuMag		13. MacQueen’s Quinterly
2. cattails		14. The Other Bunny
3. Chrysanthemum		15. The Pan Haiku Review
4. Cold Moon Journal		16. petrichor
5. confluence		17. Prune Juice Journal
6. contemporary haibun online		18. Rattle
7. dadakuku		19. Scifaikuest
8. Drifting Sands Haibun		20. Sonic Boom
9. Failed Haiku		21. Under the Bashō
10. Fireflies’ Light		22. Wales Haiku Journal
11. Haiku Canada Review		23. whiptail: journal of the
12. Kokako		single-line poem

And in these print journals that include online samplers:

24. Frogpond: one or two haibun samples in each of three issues per year

25. Modern Haiku: one haibun sample in each of three issues per year

26. Presence: one haibun sample each from Issues 65 (November 2019) through 82 (July 2025)

For each haibun style reviewed in this Guide, at least one link is provided to an example poem from one of the following venues:

• #FemKuMag		• Otoliths
• cattails		• The Pan Haiku Review
• confluence		• Pebbles (petrichor press)
• contemporary haibun online		• Prune Juice Journal
• Drifting Sands Haibun		• Rattle
• Failed Haiku		• Sonic Boom
• MacQueen’s Quinterly		• whiptail: journal of the
• The Other Bunny		single-line poem

Because new forms and styles continue to emerge and the scope of this article is limited to recent years, this Guide serves as a starting point for a “Haibunpedia” likely to grow as more haibun history is mined from archives. MacQueen’s Quinterly welcomes rare and/or innovative haibun; thus, starting a “Haibunpedia” here provides a curation hub and living laboratory of haibun.

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Alphabetical list of haibun types in this Guide:

• Absurdist (see Surrealist)		• French-braided (see Braided)
• Avant-garde		• Haibun stories
• Braided		• Hermit crab
• Burning		• Hybrid topics
• Call-response		• Inverted
• Collaborative		• Micro
• Concrete		• Mirror
• Contrapuntal		• Multi-haiku sequence
• Dadaist (see Surrealist)		• One-bun
• Diptych (see Polyptych)		• Polyptych (diptych, triptych ...)
• Ekphrastic		• Second-person point of view
• Embedded		• Shell (see Hermit crab)
• Envelope		• Surrealist
• Epigraph		• Triptych (see Polyptych)
• Experimental		• Two-line haiku
• Formal verse		• Visual poetry (aka vispo)
• Found		• Zipbun
• Free verse		• Zuihitsu

(1) Avant-garde versions of haibun are as rare and varied as avant-garde poems themselves. It’s unlikely that two such haibun overlap. For instance, “Why I Don’t Have Many Male Friends” by Joshua St. Claire includes a prose section composed entirely of the word “sports” with different inflections to satirize male bonding.¹ “What’s Underneath” by Rich Youmans includes a hermit-crab haibun-within-a-haibun structure.² Jerome Berglund’s digital-speak “0850135C3NC3” incorporates a common avant-garde technique of absurdist writing of text conversion to a digital or coded representation.³

Haibun can expand by borrowing techniques from the avant-garde poetry community. Some free journals regularly publishing these types of poems online include ANMLY, streetcake magazine, DIAGRAM, TIMBER, and #Ranger Magazine. Several print journals, such as Black Warrior Review and Bombay Gin Journal, include samplers highlighting emerging styles in avant-garde poetry.

 

(2) Braided haibun separate haikai lines and interweave them between prose or free-verse pieces of the haibun, for example, “Three O’Clock” by Dian Duchin Reed.⁴

French-braided varieties alternate parsed haikai lines across two different haiku, as in “Not by the Hairs of My Chinny Chin Chin” by Kat Lehmann.⁵ This type of haibun has influenced cheribun hybrids, too; for instance, “Voices From Each Side of a Triangle” by Scott Wiggerman.⁶

 

(3) The burning haibun is among the rarest forms, mostly existing outside the haikai community, but its popularity is slowly growing. These pieces begin with a title and prose, “burn” (aka erase) the prose to a free verse poem, and then burn the free verse to a haiku or senryu. An example: “Ache, with pollen and kink” by Elisabeth Preston-Hsu.⁷

 

(4) Call-response: Given that somonka prose is a subset of tanka prose linking two tanka sections as call-response, it seems logical that haibun varieties should exist. However, “When I is for U” (page 129) by Pamela Garry⁸ is one of the only instances in recent years. Given that somonka prose is a rarity even in tanka journals, expansion opportunities exist across haibun and other hybrids to utilize call-response more frequently.

 

(5) Collaborative haibun are constructed by multiple authors. One recent example includes “Napoleones” by Anna Lete and Kati Mohr.⁹ With collaborative haibun, it’s possible to alternate sections by each writer, combine prose by one writer with haiku by another, or even mix and match writing styles in a less-defined manner. Though not seen in the wild, the call-response haibun is fully amenable to and seems ideal for this type of collaboration.

 

(6) Concrete haibun, a type of visual poetry that has grown in recent years, leverage the fourth element of haibun—physical form—to mimic subject matter visually for effect. Lew Watts is one of the main practitioners and “Far, Far Away” is a fine example of his concrete work.¹⁰ See also “Arms Race” by Pete Dunstone, which deploys the image of an atomic bomb and surrealist imagery to create an eerie portrait of prepper culture.¹¹

 

(7) Contrapuntal haibun, in which verse or haikai separate into two different poems, are uncommon but growing in popularity. Some contrapuntal haibun separate the haiku into free-verse bodies, such as “Touching the Void” by Lew Watts.¹² Contrapuntal prose-poetry varieties include “A Grand Precipice” (page 40) by Shawn Aveningo-Sanders.¹³ Another variety provides two variations of a story, such as “Oblivious” (page 43) by Vidya Premkumar.¹⁴ The contrapuntal structure also offers the opportunity to split a full haibun into two separate haibun.

 

(8) Ekphrastic haibun is less a form than a style of haibun that responds to a work of art, including paintings, sculptures, music, etc. Ekphrastic haibun encompass various varieties, such as:

• rare forms that mix several types of haikai (“Excerpt from a Sydney weekend” by Owen Bullock¹⁵);
  
  
• embedded haibun (“Priceless” by LL Wohlwend¹⁶); and
  
  
• surrealist haibun (collaborative “Three Ekphrastic Haibun” by Réka Nyitrai and Alan Peat¹⁷).

 

(9) Embedded haibun include prose, free-verse, and/or formal-verse bodies with a found haiku within. They blend well with most types of poem structures and represent an opportunity to borrow styles from journals well represented in Pushcart anthologies, and to expand haibun into those traditions. Two examples include Joshua St. Claire’s “On Repeat: June 21, 2025” (formal verse)¹⁸ and “Midwest Nice” by Peg Cherrin-Myers.¹⁹

 

(10) The envelope haibun “sandwiches” either its prose or its haikai, as demonstrated in “Varzuga” by Lew Watts.²⁰ Braided forms of this haibun type also exist, where braided haikai lines sandwich prose, or prose sandwiches braided haikai lines. Examples include “Script of Life” by Pravat Kumar Padhy²¹ and “Control” by Kevin Browne.²²

 

(11) Epigraph haibun include an epigraph between the title and the prose or free verse. While they aren’t common, more appear in Contemporary Haibun Online these days, including “The Real Story of Menstruation” by Lorraine A Padden²³ and “Oedipus at the Traffic Lights” by Jonathan McKeown.²⁴ Epigraphs provide a potential fourth element of haibun to link and shift title, body, haikai, and epigraph, though this does not seem to be their primary function in recent years.

 

(12) Experimental haiku are growing in popularity, including recent winners of the Trailblazer Contest. These innovative haiku blend with traditional haibun structure to create new possibilities. “Winning by Default” by Susan Burch²⁵ is an example of a more common version of haibun with experimental haiku. And a more avant-garde version, “In the Heat of the Day” by Adelaide B. Shaw,²⁶ builds upon the opening lines of “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams²⁷ to create something like postku, or haikai-like short poems. These types of haibun represent an opportunity for the form to push into experimental communities and contests.

 

(13) Formal verse: Much like free-verse varieties, this type of haibun replaces the prose with formal-verse structures, such as:

• triolet (“On Repeat: June 21, 2025” by Joshua St. Claire²⁸);
  
  
• sonnet (“On an unmarked grave” by Hazel Hall²⁹); and
  
  
• villanelle (“Forty Years ... Same Gray Doors” by Lew Watts³⁰).
  

Potential expansion of formal-verse haibun includes merges with rondeaux, ghazals, pantoums, sestinas, limericks, etc. The blending of formal verse with haibun, tanka prose, and cheribun represents a fruitful area of exploration, and each type of formal verse provides an ideal structure for certain types of topics, such as repeating forms in grief poetry.

 

(14) Found poems (aka centos or collage poems) are created by taking pre-existing text from sources such as newspapers, junk mail, shopping lists, diaries, books, etc. and arranging them to create something new. For example, the found haibun “Beneath the Oak Tree” by Richard Matta is comprised of lines from works by seven other poets.³¹ And Anna Cates created “Vampire: A Found Poem” by arranging the first lines from eight novels into free verse and adding her own tanka.³²

 

(15) Free verse: Haibun that replace prose with free verse are more popular in the last few years. However, short-line free verse is still rare, which represents a way to integrate haiku into free-verse pieces without a pop-out-like effect of the haiku. Several instances exist, including:

• “Bad Song Lyrics” by Roberta Beary³³;
  
  
• “Effervescent” by Nikki Fryer³⁴;
  
  
• “Veteran” by Billie Dee³⁵; and
  
  
• “Triumph” by Shloka Shankar.³⁶

Innovations of free verse itself provide an opportunity to expand free-verse haibun, which in turn may appeal to Pushcart or Best of Net committees, as they don’t look explicitly hybrid. Specifically, an embedded haiku (see #9 above) or haiku that functions as a pivot within the free verse may do well in mainstream contests and prizes.

 

(16) Haibun stories: Fictional haibun represent a growing segment of rare haibun, which can include any of the common or rare haibun varieties as a structure. One prominent example: the series of postcard haibun written by Judson Evans, “Postcards from Bob”³⁷ (which he discusses in the second half of “Featured Writer: Judson Evans”³⁸).

Other examples of haibun story include “The Boy from Cave City, Kentucky (A Wreath of Sourgrass)” by Jonathan Humphrey³⁹ and “Year of the Farrier” by Lynn Edge.⁴⁰

Tanka tales and cheribun chronicles mirror these structures, though given fewer cheribun in general, some variations are currently quite rare. For example, my multi-haikai piece “Crossing Paths”⁴¹ (a short-listed finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #3). See also “Her Morning Walk” by Hazel Hall, an anomalous piece which includes additional spacing within the prose, free verse, and cherita.⁴²

Many variations of fictional haibun are possible, and the haibun stories by Humphrey and Edge were anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2024. This form represents another opportunity for the haibun community to gain visibility within the wider literary community.

 

(17) Hermit crab: Within the general literary community, hermit-crab poems take a structure like a dictionary entry or grocery list and develop them into a poetic form. Within the haikai community, these poems are labeled “shell haibun.” An example: “Timelines of Tattoos I Didn’t Get” by Joshua St. Claire.⁴³ Although shell haibun are uncommon, they present a good opportunity for experimental haibun growth without losing haikai moments. DIAGRAM and TIMBER are among the journals that include many examples of hermit-crab poems that might inspire new styles of shell haibun.

 

(18) Hybrid topics: An emerging trend in hybrid literature fuses creative writing with content from a non-humanities discipline, such as biology or geology. While this is unusual in haibun, a few scientist-poets are infusing their prosimetra with scientific topics. Lew Watts, for example, has created many geology-rooted works such as “Jornada del Muerto”⁴⁴; and Kat Lehmann’s background as a scientist shows in her “Sensory Deprivation Tank” and other recent pieces.⁴⁵

Mathematics, physics, and chemistry remain less-explored, and this type of haibun occasionally appears in print journals such as Modern Haiku and Rattle. For those hoping to explore current interdisciplinary trends in scientific poetry, the science department at The Offing literary magazine, Back of the Envelope, provides a good resource that might translate well to haibun.

This type of fusion poetry also impacts other hybrids, such as tanka prose and cheribun, including two of my cheribun featured in MacQueen’s Quinterly this year (“Necessary and Sufficient Conditions”⁴⁶ and “Ramanujan’s House”⁴⁷).

 

(19) The inverted haibun is a cousin of the mirror haibun (see #21 below), where the poem begins with haiku (or the final line of a braided haiku) and ends with the title or the beginning of the prose. Like the mirror haibun, the inverted haibun is a rare form among rare forms. Kat Lehmann’s pair of inverted pieces are good examples: “Upturned”⁴⁸ and “Stirring Beneath the Surface” (the latter of which is also a concrete haibun).⁴⁹

Further, this form is related to rewinding techniques in prose poetry and fiction that start at the story’s end and rewind to the beginning, or to a moment in the middle, such as my haibun “Rewind” in Failed Haiku.⁵⁰

 

(20) Micro-haibun are very short, though definitions vary from ~20 words to 180 words. Dribblebun (50-word prose plus a haiku or senryu) and drabblebun (100-word prose plus a haiku or senryu) are variations of micro-haibun that appear in recent anthologies (e.g., The Drabbun Anthology 2.0). Examples of the shortest micro-haibun include a 25-word gembun by Kala Ramesh⁵¹ and “Suburbia” (37 words) by Keith Evetts.⁵²

 

(21) The mirror haibun, another very rare variety, contains an inflection point and lines that mirror each other on either side of the inflection, much like a haibun extension of palindromes to poetic lines. Few instances have been written in haibun or tanka prose, but one recent publication includes a concrete mirror haibun, “Standing by Mirror Pond” (page 133) by Matthew Caretti.⁵³ This form provides an opportunity particularly within kireji innovation. Pivots that change meaning substantially depending on first and third lines provide a good starting point to write a mirror haibun.

 

(22) Multi-haiku sequence integration: Several types of multi-haiku structures exist, including Peter Jastermsky’s split sequences and Kat Lehmann’s sudo-ku and origami haiku. It’s natural to assume these would find their way into haibun, but pieces incorporating these types of sequences are uncommon. Split-sequence haibun do exist, including braided varieties (“Cruising Downtown Santa Fe” by Lew Watts⁵⁴) and unbraided varieties (“Aging With Grace” (page 51) by Bryan D. Cook⁵⁵).

Other sequence integration includes sudo-ku-bun (blending sudo-ku with prose), but this seems to be a very rare form thus far. See my pieces:

• “A Tale of Twilights”⁵⁶
  
  
• “Counting Degrees”⁵⁷
  
  
• “He Loves Me (Maybe)”⁵⁸
  
  
• “Rewriting Herstory”⁵⁹

 

(23) One-bun: Invented by Jim Kacian, the one-bun weaves a single sentence across a haibun. This form was more common in the 2010s but has been published occasionally in the 2020s, including a pair of one-bun by Bob Lucky.⁶⁰ It’s likely that this style can be used in tanka prose as well, though cheribun probably does not fit well with this hybridity.

 

(24) Polyptych: Experimental prose poetry and fiction often employ structures like diptych and triptych, which have also found their way into haibun. This is another fourth element of form that weaves multiple narratives over time or over perspectives into a complete poem that’s more than the sum of its individual haibun. It’s a bit like a haibun of haibun.

Examples include:

• “Somewhat of a Sad Perplexity” by Roberta Beary⁶¹;
  
  
• “Finding My Belly Button” by Emily Fortney⁶²; and
  
  
• “Scout” by Glenn G. Coates.⁶³
  
  

Short fictional polyptych haibun with embedded haiku might make for intriguing submissions for short fiction awards.

 

(25) Second-person point of view: This was another surprise, as few instances of this style were published in recent years. While first-person points of view (POVs) dominate contemporary haibun, third-person POVs in fictional haibun have emerged, particularly in MacQueen’s Quinterly and Contemporary Haibun Online.

“Orchestra—Row C Seat 15”⁶⁴ and “Grief: The Uncut Version”⁶⁵ by Roberta Beary are two of the rare instances of second-person POV in haibun online. (Of note, “Grief: The Uncut Version” won a Touchstone Award in 2024.) Given developments in experimental fiction, including interactive versions like hyperlink stories, haibun with second-person POVs are ripe for innovation.

 

(26) Surrealist: This type of haibun includes surrealist, Dadaist, and/or absurdist imagery employed for dreamlike states or social critique. The micro-haibun in dadakuku journal represent an effort to evolve this type; however, longer surrealist haibun are uncommon.

Examples of this variety include:

• “Dreams of Drowning” by Kristen Lindquist⁶⁶;
  
  
• “My dear time’s waste” by Alan Peat⁶⁷; and
  
  
• “On Discovering I Was a Formalist” (page 144) by Joshua St. Claire.⁶⁸
  
  

More possibilities exist, and those wishing to explore them can mix techniques from journals like Maintenant, petrichor, and #Ranger Magazine into their haibun. However, a haikai moment should be present in the prose or free-verse body, or there’s a risk of blurring lines between haibun and non-haibun.

 

(27) Two-line haiku are rare enough, but very few instances of haibun with two-line haiku exist. Most haibun include three-line haiku or monoku. My work seems to be a main source of haibun with two-line haiku in recent years, including:

• “Weathering the Storm” (also science-based)⁶⁹;
  
  
• “The HMS Situationship” (page 113)⁷⁰; and
  
  
• “Flashbulbs”⁷¹
  
  
• (See also “Zipbun” below.)
  
  

This suggests a good opportunity to innovate varieties of haibun with two-line haiku, which may do well in contests and prizes.

 

(28) Visual poetry (aka vispo): The vispo haibun is a very rare variant that includes visual elements beyond concrete shapes created by the text. For instance, in “On a Tear” by Lew Watts, the haiku incorporates the elements of a flier with information strips to tear from the bottom of this piece.⁷² Another instance of vispo haibun is my piece “Blackout” which includes a grid with three flow diagrams superimposed on the grid to represent the story ending as three overlapping haikai.⁷³ (See also “In Concert” by Kat Lehmann.⁷⁴)

Many possibilities exist in vispo haibun, but few are explored thus far. Haibun writers might take inspiration from the numerous types of vispo writing that exist in petrichor, #Ranger Magazine, and Fence.

 

(29) Zipbun: The zip poem, a haiku analogue, was created by British poet John E. Carley (1955-2013). The zip is a two-line poem with 15 syllables which are arranged in a 6-9 or 9-6 pattern. Each line also contains a triple-spaced caesura, which, much like the “cutting word” in haiku, allows space for “aha” moments. Also like haiku, zips typically focus on a single moment and often include imagery from the natural world.

Haibun which include zip poems, dubbed “zipbun” by Clare MacQueen, appear to be extremely rare. For an example, see my zipbun “Scar Wars” in MacQueen’s Quinterly.⁷⁵

 

(30) Zuihitsu is a proper form of its own, originating in Japan during the tenth century and predating haibun by 500 years. Technically, zuihitsu is a “follow the brush” collage poem somewhat like automatic writing but formed in a conscious way. Few examples weave in haikai, and Alan Summers seems to be the primary poet who regularly writes zuihitsu-inspired haibun (see “The Moon Is in My Torch”).⁷⁶

Most published zuihitsu exist from The Asian American Writers’ Workshop series which focuses on the form; for details, see The Margins: “Zuihitsu: Twenty-one writers interpret the genre” (15 April 2022). However, it’s possible to blend haibun, tanka prose, and cheribun into a single piece within the zuihitsu framework; this might be a good avenue for future exploration, particularly within surrealist, speculative, or absurdist pieces.

 

Conclusion:

Haibun is evolving as the haikai community grows and experiments with other literary traditions. In 2023, Haiku North America even explored video-based hybrids in the spirit of haibun (nine video-poems selected at the HNA Haibun Festival are archived at Moving Poems online⁷⁷). Interactive haibun may evolve into video haibun, hyperlink haibun, and branching narrative haibun.

Avant-garde and experimental styles suggest nonlinear narrative haibun, diagram-based haibun, visual-collage haibun, and expanded surrealist and Dadaist haibun. Some of these techniques have already influenced haikai through the annual Trailblazer Contest, established in 2021. In addition, The Postku section in Under the Bashō represents a post-haiku hybrid possibility to expand haibun into a new hybrid form.

While much is possible, it’s important to keep the haikai spirit of haibun and link-and-shift insights, even if the haibun body is a collage of phrases pasted across each other or a surrealist moment in a dream. Certainly, as haibun evolves, other hybrid forms like tanka prose and cheribun will evolve with it.

 

Colleen M. Farrelly

is a mathematician and poet who lives in Miami, Florida, and enjoys being a digital nomad. Her writing has appeared in cattails journal, Contemporary Haibun Online, #FemkuMag, Frogpond, Haibun Today, Modern Haiku, The Other Bunny, under the Bashō, and Wales Haiku Journal among others. Her work has been nominated for Touchstone and Dwarf Star Awards, has won honorable mention in several contests, and appears in telling the bees: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2024.

Dozens of her papers on computational mathematics have been published, and she’s co-author of two mathematics textbooks: with Yaè Ulrich Gaba, The Shape of Data: Geometry-Based Machine Learning and Data Analysis in R (San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2023); and with Franck Kalala Mutombo, Modern Graph Theory Algorithms with Python (UK: Packt Publishing, 2024).