I got this one from the Art Today commercial clipart website. It comes from a book called Little Pictures of Japan (My Travelship series), published by Book House for Children: the artist (and poet?) is Katherine Sturges. I'm not sure if this one is really a haiku or not: strictly speaking it has far too many syllables (8-9-8 rather than 5-7-5), but if it's genuinely Japanese that may just reflect a difficulty in translation.

Rat haiku, known as ratku, are a big thing with some rat-lovers. The biggest collection is probably the one headed "Subtle art about our favorite creatues". To my taste many of these are neither subtle nor very artistic, merely sloppily sentimental, but there are also some genuine gems. I am very taken with the work of a writer identified only as Jane from New York, and especially liked the following two:

We never realized
The toilet paper was all
Rolled up. Now we know.

If this is a bath,
I'll scream! Louder! WAIT - I CAN
GO EVEN LOUDER!


Both are perfect haiku in form, with lines of five, seven and five syllables, and the first one in particular is to my mind very haiku-ish in "feel", in the way that it conjures up an entire scene and mood with a few well-chosen words "adding up to an image that implies far more than it says" (Frances Stillman, The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary).

More poems by the mysterious Jane, and others, can be seen on a page of Ratku Contest Winners.

The following are authentic Japanese rat-related haiku by the 18th C Japanese poet and painter Taniguchi (Yosa) Buson. [A koto is "A Japanese instrument similar to a zither, having 7 to 13 silk strings stretched over an oblong box."]

Walking on dishes
the rat's feet make the music
of shivering cold

Light winter rain
like scampering rat's feet
over my koto.


The artwork shows the Oriental Rat in the Moon, and once again is from Art Today. The source is Pictorial Arts of Japan-Part II & III, published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. I don't know who the artist is/was - but that is definitely a ship rat.

I also like the following poem by Washington poet DJ Renegade, which I came across on the net. It's not quite a haiku in form but has the same delicate and visual touch as real Japanese haiku.

Beside the dumpster
a rat drinking rain
from an eggshell.







Arthur Rackham illustration to the story "Wayfarers All" from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: Ratty, who is of course probably a water-vole, talks to the seafaring Norway rat about his voyages (if you're using the frame version this will be too big to fit all on one screen, but the artwork is so detailed you can't see it properly if reduced).


Drawing by Ivan T Sanderson, from Animal Tales, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.


Drawing by Vera E. Stone and Milo Winter, from Real Nature Stories, published by Junior Press Books: this is the same artists, and the same book, as the grey rat looking through a knothole who appears with the haiku above



My own cover-art for report (available soonish) on National Fancy Rat Society symposium "Black & Brown; Wild & Tame".


My own multi-ratty-racial card: one of a set of four designs produced by the NFRS for Christmas 1998.