IHPD: 2 Weeks Away!

International Haiku Poetry Day, The Haiku Foundation’s world-wide celebration of all things haiku, is only two weeks away. We’d like to remind you to complete your projects, plan your meetings, and re-read your saijiki in preparation for our upcoming events:

HaikuLife Haiku Film Festival 2016

 
We look forward to sharing your HaikuLife, video haiga, or other haiku video production with the haiku community. We will screen offerings in 3 modes: HaikuLife Format (17 segments of 17 seconds each: view our demo); Free Format (pretty much anything goes, and including video haiga like this one); and Feature Format (anything longer than 10 minutes). Deadline for films to be made available to us for presentation: 10 April. Screenings on April 17, 2016.

EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration.

 
This year’s theme, in acknowledgment of the United Nations’ decree that this is the Year of Pulses, will be Foodcrop Haiku. We know many wonderful poems written on wheat, corn, potatoes, beets, and yes, even barley, and we hope you will add to them during our 24-hour, round-the-world collaboration. Last year we had over 500 submissions to the world’s largest collaborative poem. (Perhaps we ought to give The Guinness Book of World Records a call . . .) Beginning at 1 minute past midnight at the International Dateline, April 17, 2016.

Local Haiku Celebrations.

 
Planning a special meeting? A meeting of your local haiku society? Any other haiku-related event? Send us the details and we’ll list it as part of the IHPD2016 celebrations. Anything you’d like others to know about, and would wish to encourage their participation, is fodder for us. Please send your info by the deadline of 10 April and we’ll add your event to the list. Here’s what we have scheduled so far:




Bulgaria, online

Shoshin is an online Bulgarian haiku group. For IHPD we have prepared a short collection of haiku that include the kigo “spring wind”. During the week of April 17 we will be hosting a series of online workshops on the topic of regional season words:

Monday, April 11 — The poets are invited to share a favorite Bulgarian haiku. We will be looking for the seasonal reference in each poem and discussing how it helps (or not) the reader relate to the personal experience of the poet. We will also give examples of Bulgarian poems outside of haiku, where the human feelings and mood are in unison or in contradiction with the changing nature.

Wednesday, April 13 — The poets are invited to share their own verses for workshopping. Do all haiku need to have a season word? Are two season words too many for one haiku?

Friday, April 15 — There are more than 60 dialects of the Bulgarian language. The poets are invited to share words for plants, animals or events from their native region that can be characterized as seasonal phenomena.

Sunday, April 17 — We will be composing seventeen-wagon haiku “trains” (the last word of each verse becomes the first in the next one).

Contact: Tzetzka Ilieva at vidahaiku [at] gmail [dot] com




Hobart, Tasmania

Mid-Autumn ginko to celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day
Date: Sunday 17 April 2016
Time: 10.30 am – 12.00pm
Venue: Japanese Gardens, Hobart Royal Botanical Gardens

Ron Moss and Lyn Reeves invite you to join them in a ginko to celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day.
We will meet at the Japanese Gardens at 10.30 am. After a brief intro and reading of haiku, we will spend a time of silent walking and reflecting, writing haiku or making notes for possible haiku. Then we will come together to share our thoughts and offer feedback (if requested).

Bring your lunch or grab something from the kiosk if you would like to stay on for further haiku sharing.
Ginko in the Gardens
Contact: Lyn Reeves




Mount Angel, Oregon

Johnny Baranski will be giving a reading at the Mount Angel Abbey Bookstore on Sunday, April 17.

Contact: Johnny Baranski at jbsgarage [at] aol [dot] com

New York, New York

Amy Losak will be reading a selection of Sydell Rosenberg’s work at a poetry event organized by the Queens Botanical Garden in the borough of Queens, NYC. This public event is geared to an all-age audience, and may be complemented by a tour of the QBG.
Contact: Amy Losak at losak [at] optonline [dot] net

San Francisco, California

On April 17 from 1 to 5 p.m., the Haiku Poets of Northern California will gather at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Our featured reader will be local San Francisco poet Sharon Pretti, followed by a presentation by Abigail Friedman entitled “Reading Haiku Across Borders”.”\ Abigail is traveling to the Bay Area from Washington DC to be with us. She is the author of The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 2006), I Wait for the Moon: 100 Haiku of Momoko Kuroda (Stone Bridge Press, 2014) and Street Chatter Fading(Larkspur Press, 2015). This and all of our events are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!
Contact: Sue Antolin at susantolin [at] gmail [dot] com

Seattle, Washington

Haiku Northwest will stage a Haiku Day at the Seattle Japanese Garden on April 17 in celebration of International Haiku Writing Day. Here’s the info and schedule. Should be fun, if the weather cooperates!
Contact: Michael Dylan Welch at welchm [at] aol [dot] com

Sherman, Texas

The Texoma Haiku Society April Meeting (to be held at the Midway Mall Food Court, 4800 Texoma Parkway, Sherman, Texas) celebrates International Haiku Poetry Day. A Bonsai Verse Gallery will run throughout, featuring work not only by the Japanese masters Basho, Issa, Buson and Shiki, but classic American Poets Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Richard Wright and James W. Hackett along with contemporary haijin Nick Virgilio, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Lee Gurga, Christopher Herold, Gary Hotham, Jim Kacian, Michael McClintock, Marlene Mountain, Marian Olson, Alan Pizzarelli, Alexis Rotella, John Stevenson, George Swede, vincent tripi, Cor van den Heuvel, Stanford M. Forrester, Michael Dylan Welch, and Ruth Yarrow etc.

Our program will be as follows:

1:00 – Haiku Slam performed by Cliff & Brenda Roberts: What Is Haiku
1:30 – Open Reading
2:00 – Program: How To Write Haiku
2:30 – Open Reading
3:00 – Workshop Kigo: Frog
3:30 – Program: Haiku or Senryu
4:00 – Open Reading
4:30 – Program: How To Read Haiku
5:00 – Haijin: Open Reading
5:30 – Workshop Prize awarded



Shreveport, Louisiana

The Northwest Louisiana Haiku Society will host an event for International Haiku Poetry Day at the Broadmoor Branch of Shreve Memorial Library on April 17 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Contact: Carlos Colón at ccolon423 [at] comcast [dot] net

Stockholm, Sweden

The Swedish Haiku Society will have it’s annual meeting and lecture with the chairman of the society, former ambassador of Sweden to Japan Lars Vargö, in Stockholm on April 17. For more information please visit https://www.haiku-shs.org or https://www.facebook.com/svenskahaikusallskapet.


Contact: Anna Maris
 at anna [dot] maris [at] gmail [dot] com

West Burke, Vermont

West Burke librarian Judith Hishikawa will conduct the 2nd Annual Haiku Workshop at the West Burke Public Library [123 VT RT 5A, West Burke VT 05871] on April 24 at 1:00PM. This year’s theme is “Brevity: Vermont Mind – Haiku Mind – Zen Mind”. “We will discuss the concepts of Oneness, Intimacy, Emptiness, Uniqueness, and Naturalness using examples from the traditional masters, and classic Vermont conversations.” Please bring haiku that you are working on and your own writing materials. Coffee and refreshments are available nearby. We will go on an inspirational walk.

Contact: Judith Hishikawa at hishikawasensei [at] hotmail [dot] com

Be a part of it — celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day, April 17.