Editor’s preface: when the barbed wire slipped in
In 2014 Joakim Becker attended a workshop I was delivering in
Sweden about haiku. I focussed on the 5-7-5 syllable structure.
In 2017 I attended a haiku workshop in Sweden delivered by
Anna Maris. Anna’s suggestion that we should not get distracted
by syllable count, but that we should concentrate upon forming
haiku as a poem that could be read in one breath, was a revelation
to me in helping understand the form. Within the context of that
philosophy, one may describe many of Becker’s poems as truly
haiku-esque. Consider the breath, not only the delivery but also
the impact. So many poems in this collection will either make
you guffaw or gasp, sucker-punches hidden in jokes and puns.