New to Haiku: Charlotte Digregorio Interviews Haiku Poet & Educator Mark Forrester

As part of New to Haiku’s Interviews with Haiku Educators series, Charlotte Digregorio shares her interview with Mark Forrester. Thanks, Charlotte and Mark!

Mark Forrester is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has taught literature and composition courses there since 1994, for the English department, Honors Humanities program, and the College of Arts and Humanities. Forrester has been with the English department’s Professional Writing Program since 2004, serving as an Administrative Fellow from 2011 to 2018. He was selected as a recipient of the Philip Merrill Presidential Scholars Faculty Mentor Award in 2014 and again in 2020. He also received an English Department Professional Track Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2021 and a Writing Programs Award for Social Justice and Antiracist Teaching and Tutoring in 2024.

Forrester has been writing and publishing poetry since the 1980s and has focused on haiku and related forms since 2010. He has published two haiku chapbooks: The World Disappears (Buddha Baby Press, 2021) and Dreamer’s Moon (Buddha Baby Press, 2024). In addition to appearing in numerous journals, his haiku and related writings have been published in many anthologies. Forrester’s work has received recognition in the H. Gene Murtha Memorial Senryu Contest, the Haiku Society of America annual haibun contest, and the Whispers of Nature International Haiku Contest sponsored by the Haiku Association of Sri Lanka; he has been nominated for a Touchstone Award and received a Golden Pea Award for excellence in haiku.

1) Mark, please tell us about when and how you first became interested in haiku, and what you love about writing it.

I’ve been writing poetry as long as I can remember. I grew up surrounded by books and imbued with a love of literature. I have fond memories of my mother reading me nursery rhymes and other children’s poems. My father introduced me to many of his favorite poets, such as T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas.

Most of the poetry that I wrote growing up was free verse, although I did experiment with different closed forms on occasion. I don’t remember my first exposure to haiku. I assume at some point I had the same elementary school experience that many others have had of being introduced to haiku as 5-7-5 [syllable] nature poems.

I was drawn to haiku by two different forces, I suppose. On one hand, I was reading a lot of modern poets who had been influenced by haiku specifically and by Asian art and philosophy more generally, poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Jane Hirshfield, and Mary Oliver. I began writing and publishing some shorter poems that were not quite haiku in journals such as Lilliput Review and The Quarterly.

In addition, I was reading some Buddhist and other Eastern philosophy that was often written in a poetic form that had some similarities to haiku, books like E. A. Burtt’s The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha and Stephen Batchelor’s translations of the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna. From there, I made the leap to haiku scholars like William Higginson, Lee Gurga, and R. H. Blyth.

In terms of craft, I enjoy the concision of haiku; in a poem so short, any fluff or missteps stand out glaringly. I like the fact that, more than other forms of poetry, haiku is a true collaboration completed by the reader. And to me, the philosophy behind haiku is incredibly important. It is a means of exploring the interconnectedness of the universe in ways that complement the sciences and other art forms.

2) What other forms of poetry and writing genres are you active in?

I have written and published many haibun. I still write some free verse poetry, though mostly for my own amusement. I have a couple of partly completed drafts of essays on haiku that I hope to finish at some point. Most of my other writing is done in-house for the university. I used to edit the newsletter published by our Professional Writing Program and wrote several articles on teaching writing for that newsletter. I often mentor other faculty members and write short pieces on topics that I think will benefit them.

3) Tell us about your haiku collections––what they are about, why they are significant to you, and what readers will find significant about them?

I have published two chapbooks, The World Disappears (2021) and Dreamer’s Moon (2024), both through Buddha Baby Press. While all the haiku were written separately, I think the value of a collection is putting the individual haiku in conversation with each other. Both my chapbooks are organized seasonally, but I think there are different themes and narrative threads that run through each collection. I won’t say what I consider those themes and threads to be, because I think readers will find their own meanings and ways of connecting the haiku.

4) You’ve taught literature and composition at the University of Maryland for more than 30 years, and semester-long courses in haiku. What are your course objectives when you teach haiku and what methods do you use in achieving these objectives? Do you spend significant time on the historical development of haiku in Japan and around the world?

We talk quite a bit in my classes about the historical development of haiku. One of the things that particularly intrigues me about haiku is how the form developed so specifically in relation to the Japanese language, Japanese culture, even the climate of Japan, but now is written in hundreds of languages all around the world. So we talk about the origins of the form and also look at the ways it has adapted to different languages and to different cultures. We even talk about what climate change might mean in relation to kigo!

I want students to understand not just the history of haiku but also to understand it from the perspective of a writer. I give them exercises to try translating haiku into English (after considering the different meanings and possible arrangements of the original Japanese words), to compare the various translations, and to practice writing their own haiku. When we are reading haiku, we talk about how different word choices and different line arrangements might affect the reader’s experience. I really try to bring together the scholar’s perspective and the artist’s perspective so that students gain a fuller understanding of the haiku form and can enjoy reading and writing haiku long after they have taken my course.

5) Which ancient Japanese haiku masters particularly draw the attention of your students, and why?

There are individual haiku by all of the Japanese masters that students appreciate, but I would say that the master they are most drawn to is Kobayashi Issa. There is something in his perspective, his acknowledgement of pain and suffering, his love of children and small animals, his respect for the humanity in all of us—even those who are not human—that is startlingly modern and appealing. His work has a more subjective perspective than masters like Bashō and Buson, but that subjectivity opens up his work even to those of us reading it hundreds of years later in a very different world.

6) Could you please give us two examples of effective haiku that you bring to class to introduce students to it and tell us how they respond to them?

At the start of the semester, I’m trying to teach students how different haiku is from what they may have been taught and to show them all the different things haiku can do and be. One haiku I like to share is this one by Sangita Kalarickal:

Día de los Muertos
I towel bun damp hair
grandma style

– Acorn #49, Fall 2022

The details in this haiku are very specific, but even students whose personal experiences are completely different find themselves relating to the scene being described. They recognize and respond to the personal ritual and to the human connection. Because the details are so specific, it makes it easier for readers to connect to the haiku, even though those are not the reader’s details.

Another haiku students respond well to is this one by Eric Sundquist:

closing time
lipstick prints
on the octopus tank

– The Heron’s Nest 25.4, Dec. 2023

Students may not be able to relate to this poem in the same way they do to Kalarickal’s, but it’s useful to talk about how good haiku leave space for the reader. It’s fun to let students sit with this haiku for a minute, then compare their readings. What do they think is happening? Who left those lipstick prints? Why? How old were they? Through whose eyes are we noticing them? Many students have been taught to try to “solve” poems, to approach them like a code they need to decipher, but I want them to see that an excellent haiku can mean different things to different readers.

7) Do you encourage 5-7-5 haiku in your discussions? Are any students interested in writing 5-7-5 haiku exclusively?

We talk about 5-7-5 haiku, how that tradition developed and how the Japanese and English languages differ. We read some early 5-7-5 haiku as we explore how English language haiku developed. I don’t encourage writing in that format, since that’s pretty much the only thing most students have been taught about haiku before my class. Students are typically eager to try approaches to haiku that are new to them.

8) What are some of the difficulties your students encounter in writing haiku?

I would say that my students struggle with the same issues most of us struggle with when we start writing haiku: not trusting the image and not leaving space in the haiku for the reader. When you have been taught literature in the Western tradition, there is a tendency to think that you need to do more. So, beginning writers add more narrative, more explanation and context, more poetic language, and unnecessary description. By filling in all that space, they don’t leave room for their reader’s imagination and engagement. Related to that, beginning writers tend to see ambiguity as something that needs to be explained or corrected, rather than as something to be accepted and embraced.

9) You include discussion about female haijin and African-American haijin. Which ones do you discuss? Can you give two samples of poems that students relate to, one by an African-American and another by a woman haijin?

We read a wide variety of haiku by women, starting with Chiyo-ni and continuing through many of the excellent contemporary women haijin. We read excerpts from Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi’s book on Chiyo-ni, excerpts from Makoto Ueda’s anthology Far Beyond the Field, an entire issue of the journal #FemkuMag, as well as numerous other individual haiku by women.

One poem that students especially like is this one by Mayuzumi Madoka (translated by Makoto Ueda and included in Far Beyond the Field):

choosing a swimsuit—
when did his eyes
replace mine?

Students are able to relate to the societal pressure that this senryu suggests and connect the author’s moment of awareness to their own experiences.

With African-American haiku, we start with the haiku published by Lewis Grandison Alexander during the Harlem Renaissance. We study how modernists like Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer were influenced by haiku and Eastern philosophy. We read haiku by Richard Wright, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, and others.

Richard Wright’s haiku provoke a lot of interest and discussion:

I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.

Obviously, we talk about Wright’s use of the 5-7-5 format, what he gains and loses by adhering to that structure. There’s a tendency to assume every work by a Black writer is about race. With many of Wright’s haiku, such as this one, you can gain some knowledge by reading it through the lens of race but miss out on other implications. For example, students debated whether the loss of self in this haiku is a positive or a negative feeling, which we connected to differences between how Western and Eastern philosophy conceptualize selfhood and nothingness.

10) You also discuss objectivity vs. subjectivity in haiku, experimental haiku, and ones that deal with social justice. What do you define as experimental haiku, and do students find these experimental ones difficult to put into the larger context of writing haiku? Which social justice issues are popular with your students, and do they find it difficult to write objective haiku about them?

One of the things that I try to emphasize in teaching is that the difference between traditional haiku and experimental haiku is not a binary opposition, but a spectrum. Haiku can challenge tradition in a number of ways—choice of subject matter, how they approach that subject matter (including the use of metaphor and subjectivity), and different formal elements (such as line length and arrangement)—and to varying degrees.

One question we keep returning to in my classes is how far you can push the traditions and still be able to call what you’re writing haiku. What are the connections between Cor van den Heuvel’s single-word haiku “tundra” and Bashō’s “old pond”? The answer is elusive, but I don’t think it is “nothing.”

Many of my students struggle with the more experimental haiku, but when they consider them in connection to that question, they are better able to understand what the poets are trying to accomplish and how they are working within—or against—the haiku tradition. Of course, some students are more inclined to enjoy the experimentation and playing with language, while others prefer the more image-based, traditional approach.

I’m happy to say that my students are interested in a wide range of social justice issues! The climate crisis is one that they are very familiar with and that works well with haiku, since the form is traditionally nature-based, but my students are also interested in issues like racial and gender discrimination, economic injustice, the struggles of migrants and refugees, and so on.

It’s definitely challenging to write about issues like these, especially when you feel so strongly about them, while maintaining an objective stance. I try to encourage my students to trust the image and to trust their audience. Haiku addressing these important topics are more effective when the reader is involved in constructing their meaning, when they are able to infer the message behind the image or the juxtaposition of images.

11) Further, you discuss tanka, haibun, renga, renku, and rengay. What do students find challenging in writing haibun? Tell us about the renga, renku, and rengay exercises your students collaborated on––what they found challenging and how many students participated in each?

By the time we discuss haibun, students have been reading individual haiku for several weeks, so I think they appreciate the addition of some narrative and complete sentences! They also enjoy considering the relationship between the prose and the poetry.

I like to include linked verse writing exercises for two related reasons: to illustrate the communal history of haiku writing and to help build a sense of community in the classroom. I have done this two ways: I might do a full-class renku (shorter and with simpler rules than traditional renga or renku). I set up a Google Doc with an opening verse that I write, then students take turns adding their own verse. They enjoy the idea of linking verses and come up with some clever connections, which we discuss in class after the renku is complete.

red mitten
forgotten in the snowpile

blue-gray of twilight—
a lone cardinal
on the snow

I share a New Year’s kiss
with my old mug

For the second round, I put them in groups of 3 or 4 and explain the rengay format. Each group selects a season and theme, then divides up the verses to complete it. Again, we discuss and compare their rengay in class when each group has finished.

Months after our class ended, one student told me that she had introduced the linked verse concept to her friend at another college. They texted each other verses, back and forth; at that time, she said it was thirty-some pages long. I hope they are still keeping it going!

12) What are a few haiku authors’ books which you include in your scholarship and analysis of haiku?

I try to expose my students to a variety of perspectives on haiku, so I pull together a lot of different essays and passages from a variety of books. My students read excerpts from R. H. Blyth, William Higginson, Harold Henderson, Lee Gurga, Makoto Ueda, Charles Trumbull, Jim Kacian, Patricia Donegan, Richard Gilbert, Steven Carter, and many others.

I also compile haiku from a wide range of sources so students can experience the wide range of approaches to haiku. The two works we read in their entirety are Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior and Lenard D. Moore’s Desert Storm.

13) Can you give us one sample haiku written by a student that has particularly stuck with you?

My students have written several haiku that have impressed me, especially when I can sense something of that writer’s real experience in the poem. One student, Elise Liberty, wrote a series of haiku based on her childhood and her family’s roots in Liberia:

Picture day
Third degree burns
Hot comb cleans the kitchen

In her essay, Elise wrote, “This haiku reflects the experience of a Black girl preparing for picture day . . . A hot comb, similar to a flat iron, is used to straighten hair by running it through the strands. The term ‘kitchen’ refers to the small, often tightly curled hairs at the nape of the neck. ‘Cleaning the kitchen’ is a phrase used to describe combing through these hairs, which can easily become tangled.”

Another student, Katherine Gough, wrote this haiku:

Morning air
I still walk
As if you’re watching

Katherine especially admired Kerouac’s haiku, but I think her work here shows the influence of Mayuzumi Madoka and many of the other women haijin we read. Like Elisa’s haiku, this one presents a fresh and clear glimpse of the writer’s lived experience.

14) Some of your class discussions are student-led. What are a few of the topics discussed?

I try to match student discussion leaders to the topics they are most interested in. Some of the discussions are centered on specific social issues, such as environmental justice, systemic racism, or mental health advocacy. Other topics have included haiku and the visual arts, related forms like tanka or haibun, haiku in other regions and cultures (such as Africa and South America), and the role of Orientalism in the West’s adaptation of haiku. Topics can depend on the specific focus of the class and the interests of that semester’s students. I value these student-led discussions because they give students more agency, de-center my role in the classroom, and encourage discussion of issues that I might not otherwise have considered.

15) What kind of papers do you assign to students?

For the first paper each semester, my goal is to make sure that students understand and can apply the vocabulary we are using to understand haiku. I assign each student a recent journal issue (I use ones that don’t have any of my haiku in them!) and ask students to select any five haiku in that journal and write an essay analyzing their selections using terms like senryu, kigo, kireji, juxtaposition, and so on. It’s always interesting to see which haiku students are drawn to and how they relate to them.

For later papers, I give students more freedom to select topics that are interesting to them. I have had many students write their own haiku and provide commentary on them. Some discuss the challenges involved with translating haiku into other languages, such as Spanish, French, and Mandarin. Other students have written essays on scifaiku, on how haiku addresses specific political issues, on individual haijin such as Kerouac, and on the Black Arts Movement and haiku. One student wrote a fascinating paper on haiku as a world-building practice and connected it to the idea of “queer futurity.” If I simply tell students what to write about, I don’t learn nearly as much as when I let them develop their own topics.

16) I read in one of your bios online that you are a high school dropout. How did you further your education and what led you to teach at university level?

My family moved a couple of times while I was in high school, and I ended up at a school that was not very good and where I did not fit in and was subjected to frequent verbal bullying. When I told the principal that I was thinking of dropping out, he told me that if I couldn’t handle it, I might as well quit.

After that, I started working in food service. I married my wife Susan, and we had two wonderful daughters. We put my wife through college and then decided it was my turn. I was working as the chef at a small city club at the time, and to advance in that career, I would have needed to attend culinary school. However, given the long hours working in food service required and the limited time it allowed me to spend with my family, I decided to go in a different direction.

I worked full time until I finished my undergraduate degree. I had initially planned to major in art history, but all those classes conflicted with my working hours. We then moved to Maryland so I could pursue graduate school. I started teaching as a graduate student and fell in love with that work. I had never expected to become a teacher, but now I have a hard time imagining doing anything else.

17) What haiku projects are you currently working on or have planned for the future?

I have started putting together another haiku chapbook that I hope to publish later this year. I’m also working on compiling a chapbook of my senryu: my chapbooks have been primarily haiku, so I have quite a few senryu that are piling up and feeling unloved. At some point I would also like to put together a chapbook of some of my haibun. And, as I mentioned, I have a couple of essays on haiku that I hope to complete in the not-too-distant future.

18) Please give us three samples of your favorite haiku or senryu that you’ve written in your long career.

ebbing tide—
a barista writes your name
in the foam

– Mayfly #79, Summer 2025

Juneteenth
on one side of town
fireworks

– Frogpond 44.1, Winter 2021

cathedral ceiling
the ascension
of a black fly

– tsuri-dōrō #30, Nov./Dec. 2025

Thank you very much for the interview, Mark, and continued success with your vital teaching and authorship!

It’s been a pleasure!

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