National Haiku Poetry Day Full of Awards—and a New Campaign Too!
Hi All:
Tuesday, April 17—about one hour from now—is the inaugural National Haiku Poetry Day, a project of The Haiku Foundation. In addition to announcing the winners of the 2012 HaikuNow! International Haiku Contest, the recipients of both the 2011 Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems and the 2011 Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards, and hosting public readings and presentations in a score of cities across the United States, this NHPD also sees the beginning of our first crowdsourcing campaign. We hope we can count on your support.
The Haiku Foundation Video Archives Campaign on IndieGoGo
www.indiegogo.com/The-Haiku-Foundation-Video-Archive
Help us create the first collection of in-depth interviews, presentations and readings documenting the history and development of 20th century English-language haiku (ELH). Our goal is to film as many of the remaining first generation ELH poets, translators and scholars as possible, and make the resulting videos available to anyone who wishes to view them on the Foundation website. This will yield an instant and engaging history of the genre, put a face to the famous poems you have loved for years, and provide a sense of the personal style and presence of our genre’s best poets.
Haiku poet Eve Luckring, accomplished photographer and video artist, and I will collaborate on a series of interviews. We will conduct in-person interviews using professional audio and video equipment. Within one year, with your help, The Video Archive will launch its website at The Haiku Foundation. THF is a nonprofit organization staffed entirely by volunteers. A handful of generous people have funded our project so far; we need your help to realize The Video Archive.
Through the generosity of several talented artists, we have an enviable array of incentive gifts at different levels of giving to make your contribution even sweeter: choose a personalized THF FlipNotes haiku notebook (every haiku poet should have at least one), several pieces of original art, even have one of your poems turned into an original and unique haiga by outstanding sumi-e artists Ion Codrescu and Lidia Rozmus. But these opportunities are limited, and first come, first served. Don’t be disappointed—check out our campaign site now and select the incentive you want before they get away.
This is a word of mouth campaign, and its success relies on people being aware of the project. You can help us succeed in the following ways:
1. CONTRIBUTE: $25 or more, then pledge to invite 5 others to do the same. If 200 people do this we will have raised $5,000, and the chain of micro-giving will continue and grow
2. SHARE: the link on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, email your friends!
3. SPEAK: to your specific network of people and get them excited about the project.
We look forward to sharing the results of this project—wonderful video experiences—as soon as we can. Thank you in advance for your support of this important cause.
Take care.
Jim Kacian
President, THF
PS That link again: https://www.indiegogo.com/The-Haiku-Foundation-Video-Archive
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I see that I just posted this comment in the wrong spot on the blog. I may be too old to learn all these new tricks. As I said, I’m really excited about this project. When I first learned there was a worldwide haiku community, I couldn’t wait to find out what had been going on all those many years I thought I might be the only person on the planet writing little poems into a little notebook. I began filling my library with vintage books and journals, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. How I envy poets like Michael McClintock who traveled to Tennessee to interview John Wills in 1976. How I’d love to sit down right now with Michael McClintock (and if I weren’t afraid to fly, he might invite me in for tea if I showed up at his door). I have a collection of cassettes I purchased years ago, “In Their Own Voices: A Century of Recorded Poetry,” which is a treasure. We have a chance now to do this and even more for English-language haiku. I can hardly wait! –Billie
This looks great.