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A weblog from the editors of Linebreak

The regulars

Ash Bowen's poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, and Black Warrior Review, among other publications. He lives and works in Texarkana, AR.

Jennifer Jabaily's poetry has appeared in Mannequin Envy and Fickle Muses. She's a second-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Ashley Anna McHugh is a third-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Measure, DIAGRAM and Memorious as well as other publications.

Johnathon Williams's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, the Pebble Lake Review, and Unsplendid. He lives in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife and daughters.

Burn Rubber, Not Your Soul

By Ashley on Oct 31, 2008

Given that Fayetteville’s annual Bikes, Blues and Barbecue festival draws over 325,000 bikers to Northwest Arkansas for a cacophonous weekend of terror, I’m shocked to learn that I’ve never heard of biker poetry, which includes a variation on the haiku dubbed “baiku”.

The only formal explanation of baiku that I could find was on a personal blog, which described the poem as a six-line poem written in tercets with a syllabic pattern of 5-7-5-5-7-5 and a rhyme scheme of abcabc. 

The author of the blog goes on to give examples of baiku, including a section titled, “Tales From Shakespeare, Retold In Baiku”. My favorite? “Romeo And Juliet”.

However, not every biker poem has to be formal. A light-hearted poem entitled “Bugs On My Face” proves the point:

I got bugs on my face
There’re June bugs and May flies 
On summer’s wind ride 
God knows when they‘re born
Now I know when they died

While plenty of biker poetry is available online, an anthology edited by Jose Gouveia, “Rubber Side Down: The Biker Poet Anthology”, is already available on Amazon.  

Maybe next year the rally should host an open mic?

Comments off. // biker poetry, haiku

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