Published: April 09, 2008 12:27 pm            

Published Poets

TEUTOPOLIS — Eighty-four freshmen and sophomores at Teutopolis High School are published poets.

After assigning his freshman and sophomore English students to write haikus — a venerable form of Japanese poetry — THS teacher Al Church put the poems into a book.

“Seasons of Youth: The World Through Haiki and Youth” is available online through the publisher at www.lulu.com, as well as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Church, who visited Japan last summer on a Fulbright Fellowship, introduced haiku to his students last fall. Students were assigned to write about the seasons and paint a picture with words, albeit not many words. That’s because haiku has specific rules developed centuries ago in medieval Japan.

All haikus must be three lines, with the first and third lines five syllables each and the second line seven syllables.

“This was very hard for some of them,” Church said.

Sophomore Jacob Habing agreed that adhering to the rules was difficult.

“Getting the syllables right was the hardest thing for me,” Habing said.

The students’ haikus focused on seasons because traditional haiku is heavily season-oriented. Church said many of the THS poets focused on subjects virtually anybody in central Illinois would understand.

“A lot of the fall haiku dealt with hunting,” Church said. Other popular seasonal topics were swimming (summer), snow (winter) and blooming flowers (spring).

Sophomore Karl Doedtman said there was still some flexibility, despite the rules of haiku.

“We got to write about whatever we wanted to,” Doedtman said.

Church said haiku can be about almost anything.

“If you can take a picture of it, you can write about it in haiku,” he said.

Church adding writing haiku is a valuable educational experience.

“The kids were able to learn how to place importance in different areas of their lives,” he said. “They also learned about other cultures.”

Freshman Allison Funneman, who provided the book’s cover photography as well as several poems in the book said the hardest aspect of the assignment was narrowing down potential topics.

Funneman said she used her photographs to help her narrow down potential topics.

“I love taking a lot of pictures,” she said. “I was looking through some of my pictures and they helped me, especially for summer and fall.”

Bill Grimes can be reached at 217-347-7151 ext. 131 or bill.grimes@effinghamdailynews.com.