A selection of much-loved haiku, a type of Japanese poem characterised by 17 syllables, focusing on the theme of love.
Haiku poems about the natural world and the seasons are well known, but many poets have used the genre to capture the evocations of love. From the tender and the melancholy to the witty and the ribald, the poems and images in Haiku: Love comment on the most universal of human emotions.
The majority of the poems featured date from the Tokugawa period (early seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries), and are nearly all newly translated by Alan Cummings for this edition. The best- known Japanese classical authors, including Basho, Buson and Issa, are published alongside verses by many female poets and a number of contemporary writers.
Haiku: Love is a companion volume to the bestselling Haiku and Haiku Animals. As with the others in the series, the book is illustrated with images from the unrivalled collection of Japanese paintings and prints in the British Museum.
Alan Cummings is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has published widely on Japanese literature and Kabuki drama.