Introducing The Haiku Foundation Forum

As those of you who have spent any time on the THF website know, the Foundation blog, troutswirl, has been the primary means of connecting with presenters and fellow poets. While this has made the site dynamic, it has also placed a premium on the amount of time and energy demanded from our volunteer staff, most notably our blogmaster Scott Metz. We have been considering for some time how we might lighten his load while at the same time maintain or even increase the amount of access that haiku readers, writers and aficionados have to content and to each other.

Today we enter a new realm. Through the persuasive advocacy of, among others, Richard Gilbert, and the stringent preparation and testing of webmaster Dave Russo, we are pleased to introduce you to the THF Forum. Each of the features you have come to expect on the THF site is still here, but now, instead of finding them on the blog, they each have their own dedicated space in the forum, in a board that bears their name.

In the course of this week you will find introduced Laura Sherman’s Quicksilver board, along with several other boards of like content that are aimed especially at those who are new to haiku. (Tuesday, December 7). Next the far-reaching Periplum series, by David Lanoue, will be released (Wednesday, December 8), followed by Religio, a new series by David Grayson, which will explore the religious implications and evocations of many cultures to be found in haiku (Thursday, December 9). Alan Summers is putting the final touches on his new board, Saccades, which we will roll out on Friday, December 10. Other features now on the blog will migrate to the forum over the next couple months.

Today we roll out the first board on our forum, entitled In-Depth Haiku: Free Discussion Area. This is just what is sounds like: a place to talk about anything in haiku that’s on your mind. Find a topic that interests you and join in. Don’t see something you want to talk about? Start your own thread. It’s easy. Find out how by reading our easy-to-use guide How to Use this Forum, which is, of course, another board in the forum.

How to Access The Forum

Okay, ready to go? So how do you find the forum? Easy. From the main menu find the tab marked Forum and click on it. It’s next to the Blog tab.

This takes you to the home page for the THF forum, and there you’ll find all the boards that are available (and we will be adding more as time goes along), as well as easy instructions on how to use them. Use them three times and they’re yours, as the saying is. We expect you will find this a greatly enhanced user experience in very short order.

All who participate in our discussions are expected to follow The Haiku Foundation’s Code of Conduct. If you have a question or a problem with the forum, please use one of the methods described in Reporting Problems.  

We look forward to seeing you there!

Jim Kacian
President
The Haiku Foundation