Say what the haiku is about, add what you saw or heard if you can, and Hemmingway writes it in three lines: five syllables, seven, then five. Ask for three and you get three to pick from.
A haiku has room for about a dozen words, so it cannot carry anything you did not give it. It will not add a mountain, a pond or a cherry tree to a poem about your allotment.
What makes a haiku work
- Give it a moment, not a subject. "Autumn" is a subject. A robin landing on a spade handle is a moment, and a haiku is a moment written down.
- Put two things side by side. The classic shape sets one image against another and leaves a pause between them. Frost on the beds, then your own breath.
- Let the season show. Traditional haiku carry a word that places them in the year: frost, blossom, the first swallow.
- Leave the feeling out. No "peaceful", no "lonely". If the images are right, the feeling arrives without being named.
An example
Asked for a quiet haiku about the first frost on the allotment, with a robin on the spade handle and breath you could see, a haiku along these lines is what to expect:
First frost on the beds.
Robin on the spade handle.
I can see my breath.
Five, seven, five. No rhyme and no comment.
About 5-7-5
In English a haiku is usually taught as seventeen syllables in lines of five, seven and five. That is what this tool writes, and it is the pattern to use for school.
Count it yourself. AI models sometimes miscount, and words such as "fire" or "every" have a different number of syllables depending on who says them. Tap each line out on your fingers, and if one is off, tell it which line and it fixes it.
The Japanese form counts units of sound that are shorter than English syllables, so some poets writing in English use fewer than seventeen. For that looser kind, ask in the chat for a haiku without the strict count.
Common questions
Is the haiku generator free?
Yes. Hemmingway has a free trial with no card needed, and this tool opens it with your answers filled in. You sign up once, and the haiku is written in the chat.
How many syllables are in a haiku?
Seventeen in the English version: five in the first line, seven in the second and five in the third. It does not rhyme and usually has no title.
Does a haiku have to be about nature?
No, though nature and the seasons are where the form began. A haiku about people and their habits, often a funny one, is called a senryu and has the same shape. This tool writes either kind.
Can it write other short poems?
Those have their own tools: the limerick generator, the acrostic poem generator, and the poem generator for free verse. To write one by hand, see how to write a poem.
Will it sound like AI?
It is built not to. Hemmingway-1, the model behind it, came first on sounding like a person in our own blind test, Human-Likeness. With only three lines, one wrong word shows, so change any you would not have chosen.