The Haiku Foundation Video Archive: how you can help make it possible
The Haiku Foundation has accomplished a lot in a few years. The Haiku Registry, Troutswirl blog, Forums, HaikuNow! contests, Touchstone Awards, Digital Library, Montage, Per Diem, the Haiku App and more…not bad for a handful of people who volunteer their time. Thank you for being a part of it.
What next? The Haiku Foundation Video Archive, and for this we need your help.
Imagine if you could watch your favorite poets talk about their craft and lives and respond to questions you always wanted to ask them. While the technology wasn’t available during the lifetime of some of our favorite poets, today we have the opportunity to create a rich resource for our generation and those to come.
Our goal: to create the first collection of in-depth interviews documenting the development of 20th century haiku.
As we move forward into the 21st century, many haiku poets who led the way in the 20th have already passed away. We need to start working immediately to preserve the voices of those who are still with us. Their stories deserve to be heard.
Haiku poet Eve Luckring, an accomplished photographer and video artist, will collaborate with The Haiku Foundation’s founder and president, Jim Kacian, on a series of interviews. They will travel to record 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. The Archive will be available free to everyone who wishes to use it.
In less than a month, on April 17, a series of readings across North America will celebrate National Haiku Poetry Day. On that day, with the help of the crowd funding platform IndieGoGo, we will launch a campaign to fund the Video Archive. We have high hopes!
The Video Archive is about honoring and recording some talented poets who for many years have quietly influenced the literary landscape. Also, it’s about us. Our history, presented in detail, and artfully. I’m excited to be involved. More detailed information will be made available on the blog, website and elsewhere as we get closer to the launch date. Please visit IndieGoGo to view the Video Archive campaign site when it goes live on April 17.
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Thank you all for your interest and your comments.
Sandra, I’m glad you expressed the hope the Video Archive will extend beyond the borders of the USA, and the Archive will certainly do so. It will be an English-language archive. It’s very possible (THF is focused on possibilities) that the Video Archive will record the images and voices of people for whom English is not a first language. The initial interview subjects are North American. By no means does The Haiku Foundation intend to stop there…
A great idea that I hope can somehow, one day be extended beyond the borders of the United States to include the wealth of variety in English-language haiku. Good luck, Eve and Jim with your work and travels.
It is a great idea, and it’s something that Sir Andrew Motion helped to achieve too. Karen, my wife (an experienced producer, editor, and sound recordist in her own right) and myself have filmed a lot of archive footage before, during, and after the Official Opening of the Haiku Pathway. We showed a very short piece at a British Haiku Society conference several years ago, when we were lucky to have for gratis the skills of a professional TV editor and sound specialist who is a friend and colleague of Karen.
We are certainly keen to find time and money to edit our footage in the near future, as ‘NHP’, now known as With Words, has been interested since 2000, to film haiku poets.
So good luck with the funding, and enjoy visiting each poet in person: I’ve always enjoyed Busman’s Holidays, and will be very envious indeed.
Alan
As the daughter of a history teacher, I too say “Great idea” — people learn in so many ways, so good to present and preserve in many ways.
Because of my recent caregiving years, I can’t help but think of older people too. My mother and I watched many educational programs together, which made her feel like herself again. Reading was not always possible.
Great idea.