The Hemingku

The Hemingku is the third poetry form we created.

What Does the Hemingku Stand for?

The Hemingku is a portmanteau word consisting of the following elements:

“Heming”, taken from the famous writer “Ernest Hemingway”, who is known for his six word story prowess and writing a powerful story with a tiny amount of words; and
“ku”, as in ‘haiku’.

The idea behind the Hemingku is to allow writers of all sorts (poets, prose / short story writers, novelists, etc.) to create a poem that tells an impactful and inspirational story with a very limited number of words.

The Rules

A hemingku must be composed in the following format:

7 to 10 words picked from two seemingly unrelated sources;
The words can be spread across a maximum of 4 lines; and
They must tell a complete story or scenario.

A hemingku poem can have a title (which does not count towards the overall word count) and punctuation. No matter the topic covered, the tone must be uplifting or inspirational.

As with all our other poetry forms, you are encouraged to credit and link to the inspirations behind your pieces.