Haiku Mentor is a simple but surprisingly powerful tool for poets, teachers, and anyone who loves short-form poetry.

Paste in a poem — haiku, senryu, or anything that might be one — and the tool will tell you what it is, how it works, and why.

Whether you’re new to haiku or you’ve written thousands, this tool helps you understand the poem’s craft, its structure, and its underlying aesthetic qualities in seconds.

You can use it for:

• Checking whether a poem fits haiku, senryu, or neither
• Learning the cues that distinguish different short-form genres
• Exploring multiple interpretations of a poem
• Understanding the seasonal, emotional, and aesthetic elements hidden inside your work
• Improving your own writing through clear, helpful insight

What It Does

When you enter a poem, Haiku Mentor gives you a structured, reader-friendly breakdown covering:

• Overall Impression: a brief summary of what impression your poem creates.
• Kireji (Cutting Effect): if there is a cut in the poem, it explains how it works, the relationship between the two parts, and what emotional or narrative effect the cut creates.
• Kigo (Seasonal Reference): if your poem includes a seasonal reference, the tool highlights it and explains how it functions.
• Sensory & Imagery Notes: it lists which of the five senses are used in the poem, and which words evoke them
• Japanese Aesthetic Elements: a list of which of the traditional aesthetic elements (e.g., yūgen, wabi-sabi, ma, karumi, shiori, sabi) are present in your poem, with brief descriptions.
• Tone & Style: a short paragraph about the overall tone and style of your poem.
• Suggestions For Improvement: usually, there will be three bullet points with suggestions on how to improve your poem (but note that it won't actually provide examples unless you ask for them because this tool is not about doing the work for you - it is merely to provide feedback and help you learn how to improve your poems).
• Classification: finally, it will assess whether your poem is haiku, gendai haiku (i.e., a more modern style of haiku), senryu, zappai, or none of the above (e.g., a three-line poem).

Note: You’ll access this tool using your ChatGPT account (free or paid). Once you click the link you'll receive, it opens instantly in your workspace.

Sample Output

If all of the above seems a bit abstract, let me show you an example.

Here is a poem I entered into Haiku Mentor:

thunder clouds —
drips of ice cream
along the boardwalk

And this is the feedback it gave me (you can click the image to see a larger, more readable version in a new browser tab):

After a few iterations based on its suggestions, I arrived at a version I was happy to publish:

thunderclap —
on hot pine boards
a puddle of ice cream

I use this tool every single day to help refine the daily haiku that I write and publish on various online platforms, such as Medium.

A note on authorship

This tool is not designed to write haiku for you.

Instead, it's intended to help you see more clearly, question your choices, and develop confidence in your own judgement as a haiku poet.

The work — the noticing, the decisions, the final poem — remains yours.

Note: All poems shown in the sample outputs were written by me and remain my copyrighted work. They are shown here for demonstration purposes only.

About the Creator

Created by Mark Stuart Farrar, the Aphantasic Haikuist and founder of 17 Onji and author of thousands of haiku exploring perception, silence, and implication in English-language haiku.

This tool grew out of long-term practice — not academic theory — and is designed to support writers at the page, not lecture them from a distance.

Your Haiku Practice Deserves Thoughtful Tools

Haiku Mentor gives you a clear, grounded understanding of your poems — what they are, how they work, and how to strengthen them. Try it with your next draft and experience the difference for yourself.

→ Start using Haiku Mentor today

It’s free to use, and if you find it helpful, you’re welcome to leave a small optional contribution to support ongoing haiku projects and future tools.

This tool is also part of the full 17 Onji Haiku Crafters’ Suite, a curated set of creative and analytical tools designed for dedicated haiku writers.

If you'd like to support my wider creative work, you can do so through my optional tip jar.

Note that Haiku mentor was formerly known as Is This A Haiku?

The tool has been renamed to better reflect its purpose: clear, immediate guidance to help you write stronger haiku with confidence.