What belongs in a Taiwanese haiku?

Haiku carries a season in a few words. But whose seasons? Huang Lingzhi’s Taiwan Haiku Saijiki gathered seasonal vocabulary for Taiwan, bringing local experience into a poetic form inherited from Japan. The museum’s new exhibition, 越境的詩心, follows this wider history through donated literary materials.

Taiwanese writers took up tanka and haiku during Japanese colonial rule. After the war, restrictions on Japanese changed the conditions in which they could write. The Taipei Tanka Society began in 1968; it could not use “Taiwan” in its name during the White Terror. It became the Taiwan Tanka Society in 2003. Huang founded the Taipei Haiku Society in 1970.

The forms also moved between languages. The exhibition’s account includes Wu Yongfu’s Taiwanese-language haiku and Zhan Bing’s ten-character poems. These writers made short forms fit the words they wanted to use.

Visit: September 30, 2026–May 30, 2027. National Museum of Taiwan Literature, 2F, exhibition room E. Free admission. Tuesday–Sunday, 09:00–18:00; ordinarily closed Mondays. October 9–11 open. October 26 open; October 27 closed. November 28 closed. No. 1 Tang Dezhang Boulevard (Zhongzheng Road), West Central District, Tainan.