COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Columbia high school teacher is using his love for writing haikus to create a community of poets.
Three lines. Five syllables. Seven syllables. Then five syllables again.
It’s how high school English teacher Tim Mueller thinks, writing haiku poems in his free time.
“Laughter of children, mysterious explorers. The bell rings too soon,” Mueller writes one quickly. “I use the metaphor it is like playing Tetris. It was like these syllables and words were falling from the sky and I was rearranging them and putting them on the page.”
For Mueller, language and writing is something he’s been passionate about for as long as he can remember.
“I've always been a writer. I can remember trying to write cursive before I was even in kindergarten,” Mueller reflects. “And of course, I didn't even know what my letters were. But I've always felt passionate about writing.”
After graduating from college, Mueller first started teaching in 1985.
“I had hoped to become a great English teacher, but I got a phone call from a man who was starting an alternative school suburb outside of Dallas, and I ended up teaching history for 17 years, and I enjoyed every minute of it,” Mueller explains about his life in Texas before moving to the Palmetto State in 2002.
Mueller spent some time working as a teacher at Spring Valley High School, he says, before he decided to return to “alternative school” like he’d worked at in Texas.
In 2014, Mueller started writing haiku as he began his job teaching at the state Department of Juvenile Justice.
“What I saw there when I experienced there, the successes and failures that I had that really shaped and changed how I think about things…And I can't help but feel like the change in environment really spurred me on so to speak. And before I knew it I had 1,000 haiku written,” Mueller shares. “I think that took about two and a half years and I decided to set a goal of 2,000 and then I said, ‘What the heck, let's make it 5000.’ and that was in 2019. And here we are now four and a half years later and right now I'm unofficially about 20 haiku away from 5,000.”
He’s set out to try and write as many poems as he can, with hopes of one day beating the world record. While he has a ways to go before reaching that, it’s a passion that he’s sharing with his community by getting poems published, posting his haikus on Facebook and sharing his poems with his students during his first year teaching creative writing at AC Flora High School.
“I think that's what really excites me is when other people will attempt to write haiku in response, maybe to one I've written,” Mueller smiles. “I'm really excited by the imagination and creativity of kids these days, you know, because kids these days we blame them for everything that's wrong. And so when you can see just how they can shine and how they can create and the beautiful things they can do, that keeps me young at heart that's for sure.”