Poetry Japanese formal poetry (which was generally referred to as "waka"), and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes. By the tenth century, tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, to the point where the originally general term "waka" ("Japanese poetry") came to be used exclusively for tanka. Tanka are still widely written today. Haiku is a popular form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, which evolved in the 17th century from the "hokku", or opening verse of a renku. Generally written in a single vertical line, the haiku contains three sections totalling 17 "onji", structured in
Haiku in English verse, were published between 1997 and 2006 (issues 1-8 were edited by Patricia Kelsall; issues 9-20 by Beverley George). Nowadays "Paper Wasp" is published in Australia, "Kokako" in New Zealand and "Chrysanthemum" (bilingual German/English) in Germany and Austria. Two other online English-language haiku journals founded outside North America, "A Hundred Gourds" and "Notes from the Gean", are now defunct. John Barlow's Snapshot Press is a notable UK-based publisher of haiku books. In the early 20th century, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore composed haiku in Bengali. He also translated some from Japanese. In Gujarati, Jhinabhai Desai 'Sneharashmi' popularized haiku and remained a