THF Reports: Our Frogpond Journey
Francine Banwarth and Michele Root-Bernstein step down at the end of the year after 4 years of editing The Haiku Society of America’s international journal Frogpond. In this presentation from Haiku North America 2015 they discuss some of the many things the experience has taught them.
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2015 Fundraiser Schedule
- November 26: In Memoriam, a tribute to haiku poets who have left the community in the past 2 years; the release of Raymond Roseliep: Man of Art who Loved the Rose, a biography of the pioneering haiku poet by Donna Bauerly.
- November 27: The Haiku Foundation’s Black Friday Gift Shop promo; re:Virals 11.
- November 28: Linda Papanicolaou gives a final accounting of Renku Sessions 3: “A Bowl of Cherries”; a new Old Pond Comics cartoon “Goose Neck”.
- November 29: THF Reports: “Our Frogpond Journey,” Francine Banwarth and Michele Root-Bernstein’s discussion of their editorship of Frogpond; THF Social Media Day highlights of our social outreach from the Foundation’s social media director Stella Pierides.
- November 30: THF Interviews: Gayle Bull; a new Book of the Week: small town by vincent tripi.
- December 1: THF Galleries: “Haiga of Stephen Addiss”; the new World of Haiku country for December: Australia.
- December 2: “Librarian’s Cache”, selections from the Foundation’s holdings by Digital Librarian Garry Eaton; results from the annual THF assessment survey.
- December 3: THF Readings: Tom Clausen; a challenging haiku crypto-quiz from Anita Krumins.
- December 4: THF Lectures: Zinovy Vayman on “Humor in Haiku”; re:Virals 12.
- December 5: “Touchstone Gardens” around the world, where winners of the Foundation’s prestigious Touchstone Awards have displayed their award stones; a new Old Pond Comics cartoon “Jamming Crabs”.
- December 6: THF Lectures: Ruth Yarrow entertains and instructs us in “Haiku with Feathers,” from Haiku North America 2015; a report on the Foundation’s Grant Proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts in 2015.
- December 7: The summary report from our THF Fundraiser 2015; a new Book of the Week: jazztronaut by Geert Verbecke.
This Post Has 9 Comments
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Dear Francine Banwarth and Michele Root-Bernstein,
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I just want to thank you for all your hard work, your support of my poetry, and for those not long into writing haiku, from various cultures.
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A deep bow to you.
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warmest regards, and respect,
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Alan
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Thanks so much to Michele and Francine for this enlightening presentation. I really enjoyed it and it was great to see how these editors worked.
Regards
marion
Thank you, THF, for posting a recording of this talk. I attended Michael Kennedy’s exceptional workshop offered at the same time. It was a hard choice, but since I now have gotten to attend both, it was the right one!
My blog today has a poem in English, Irish, Greek, Spanish and Malayalam:
http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/
It’s possible to create a multilingual feast. In fact, it’s quite easy.
In 2013, Francine Banwarth brought Frogpond into disrepute by publishing Roberta Beary’s scandalous “review” of my anthology of Irish haiku titled “Bamboo Dreams”. Many people consider that “review” to be racist and slanderous. Ms Banwarth should have resigned much earlier.
Francine and Michele used the word ‘inclusive’ but this was contradicted by Frogpond’s dedication to English-language haiku only. Some of us in a multilingual Europe see the USA, rightly or wrongly, as a crucible of languages and cultures. Why boil it down to English-language haiku only? How can a journal (anywhere in the world) reject haiku in Japanese, for instance, or in the native language(s) of its own continent? English is only one of many prisms with which to view and experience a multifarious universe.
Hear, hear!
30 Nov 2015
Garbriel–
Sounds like a good idea but I think Frogpond would need an editor who not only knew the Japanese language well but also what makes a good haiku. And that would be true for any other language for that matter. So where would Frogpond find such gifted editors as Francine Banwarth and Michele Root-Bernstein or its previous editors to consider those submissions?
And if you meant translations then we did have something like that with Whirligig edited by Max Verhart. And the final issue of that magazine has just arrived. It would be interesting to hear from Max how that went for him.
It is hard to escape the after effects of the Tower of Babel… But maybe the human race needed it in order to have “many prisms with which to view and experience a multifarious universe.”
Gary
Thank you, Francine & Michele, for this awesome gift to the haiku community. And for the gift of your four years at the mast. I’ll be sharing this often with other poets.
Billie