Baiku: Very Short Poems Made While Riding A Bicycle

Christ BrandtChris Brandt is a writer, activist, translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches in the English Department and the Peace and Justice Program at Fordham University. Poems and essays have been published in Spain, France, Mexico and the US; translations in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, UC Berkeley, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.


Call for Baikus for possible publication online or in book form.

What is a baiku? A very short poem made while riding a bicycle, and later recalled in stillness. Some will have the classic form of a haiku; others will find their own forms. They need not be about bicycle riding as such, but it will somehow be clear they have to do with it. What makes a baiku besides its brevity and the fact that the Muse is riding on your handlebars? This, for example?

I just love
riding down
the green
west side
of Manhattan.

That’s a nice sentiment, and I do love riding the bike path, but there needs to be something more, though what that "more" is I leave to chance, to the Muse, and to you.

[contact-form 3 “Baiku”]


Feel free to share the poem you submit in the comments below as well. The same license applies. Only poems submitted by the above form are automatically submitted to Chris Brandt.

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