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HSA Regional Announcements & News for 2008This section lists events which may be of particular interest to HSA members in one of these regions of the United States (or in Japan): Northeast | Northeast Metro | MidAtlantic | South | Southeast | Southwest | Midwest See the archives of Regional Meetings: | 2007 |
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If you are not an HSA Regional Coordinator but would like to publicize a haiku event that may be of interest to HSA members in your region, please contact the Regional Coordinator for your region. Northeast RegionBangor Haiku Group (Maine)January 2008. Our January 2008 meeting centered on reading from four recent haiku anthologies: Haiku Humor: Wit and Folly in Japanese Poems and Prints (Stephen Addiss with Fumiko and Akira Yamamoto); Greieri si crizanteme, Haiku Anthologie internationala (Valentin Nicoitov, Bucharest, Romania); lanterns, a firefly anthology (Stanford M. Forrester); and flowers of another country, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2007 (Wanda D. Cook & Linda Porter). One from each and did we note a renga-like linking in the HSA Members’ Anthology?
We have been catching a lot of snow recently and our own haiku reflected this:
Astrid and Bruce hiked and climbed in Acadia National Park to the southeast of Bangor. On the summit of Gorham Mountain Bruce did a haiga of two small pine trees in the wind. On Canada Cliffs they saw up close three soaring bald eagles, their white heads and tails shining. On the way home in the beginnings of another blizzard they saw a still horse with unmelted snow on its back. Astrid wrote a haiku on this. All these activities, sort of, to prepare for a BHG ginko. Bruce taught his first winter term class in sumi-e (black ink painting), which centered on an overview of history and techniques and a calligraphy exercise. Next class is an exercise in bam-boo painting with a lucky bam bamboo plant and neo-traditional and modern bamboo sumi-e for reference. —Bruce Ross Boston, MassachusettsJanuary 2008. The Boston Haiku Society continues to meet on the third Saturday of each month at 2 p.m. at the Kaji Aso Studio. All are welcome who may be visiting the area. The BHS will be reading at the upcoming New Year's Celebration at the Studio on January 26th. The theme for this year's celebration is "Unexpected Visitor" and will feature paintings, drawings, ceramics, with poetry readings and new music performances inspired by the theme. Raffael de Gruttola, Judson Evans, and Tadashi Kondo have been invited to an International Poetry Conference in Cesenatico, Italy from June 8th to 15th. The Conference will highlight over three days the various Japanese poetic forms including renku, haiku, haibun, and haiga. The Conference at this small fishing village on the Adriatic Coast is sponsored by the University of Bologna at Forli and the Reggio Emilia Region of Northern Italy. The Haiku Circle Group of Western Massachusetts will again sponsor a one day event of workshops and readings in the lovely area of Northfield, MA near the Vermont and New Hampshire borders on June 17, 2008. Last year’s coordinators, vincent tripi and Raffael de Gruttola, will be augmented with the able assistance of Wanda Cook, replacing Raffael while he is in Italy. Raffael de Gruttola and Carlos Colón self-published a small 8 ½” x 11” book entitled Wall Street Park. It's a new approach to renku following the concrete poetry genre. It is available from either poet for $10 (postage pd.). An explanation of the linking patterns by the two poets is included. The BHS will be reading sometime in late Spring at a new poetry series at the Boston Center for the Arts as well as at the Yen Ching Library at Harvard College. In addition, Judson Evans, Karen Klein, and Raffael de Gruttola have cross-adapted a one act play by Katherine Snod-grass, Director of the Boston Playwrights Theatre, called HAIKU. Music and dance will be written for a renku perfor-mance in the near future. —Raffael de Gruttola Western MassachusettsJanuary 2008. The Haiku Poets' Society of Western Massachusetts wish a HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! Gloria Ayvazian hosted our holiday celebration in her home this year. The centerpiece of the luncheon table was a chocolate frosted cake decorated with yel-low dandelions and and a dande-lion haiku. Patricia Harvey and Karen Reynolds received awards for perfect attendance. Katharine Hazen completed her term as our librarian. She has diligently carried out her duties for the past year and a half and now passes the position to Patricia Harvey. Many thanks to Katharine for her service. We also said goodbye to Beverly Bachand who is moving to South Carolina. She is keeping her membership with us and we will be in touch by phone and email. She is a long-distance member now, but we will miss her sense of humor and infectious laugh at our meetings. This year Wanda Cook sug-gested it would be nice to mark National Haiku Day by sending cards to the other haiku groups across the country. She and Patricia Harvey worked on the card design. Pat hand crafted each card. The best of it was we received responses from the Haiku Poets of Central Maryland, the Bangor Haiku Group, and the Chi-Ku Group. Many thanks for their haiku and greetings. We are very proud of the job that Wanda Cook and Linda Porter did with the HSA Mem-bers' Anthology, flower of another country. Did you happen to notice that the spring green bookmark in your copy marked your poem? That was just one of the many unique touches of this book. Per tradition, Wanda handed out individual 2008 Writing Goal Sheets at the January meeting. Each of us stated one goal we were going to make a concerted effort to accomplish this year. This was followed by a lively session of haiku writing and critiquing. What a great way to start out the New Year! Northeast MetroLake Champlain-Adirondack, New YorkJanuary 2008. The Lake Champlain-Adiron-dack Haiku Society is excited to host, along with the State Univer-sity of New York at Plattsburgh an International Haiku Conference & Festival. The conference dates are Tuesday, July 29 through Saturday, August 2, 2008. The theme of the conference is ba, or “place,” and is intended to celebrate the beauty of the Champlain Valley and Adirondack Mountains. The Lake Champlain-Adirondack Haiku Society has been meeting for the past four years, and developed from a group of community poets and Honors Student participants in a series of haiku courses at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Conference planning members include Naromie Ganesh, Elin O’Hara, Elaine Leavitt, Jacob Lamitie and Rich Schnell. During the past year members have participated in the bi-annual St. Michaels College (Vt.) Madori Festival (Japanese Festival of Spring), sponsored trips to Montreal’s Botanical Gardens to visit Japanese and Chinese Gar-dens, and traveled to see ikebana, bonsai and penjing exhibits and share each other’s poetry. The society has also co-sponsored visits by haiku poet John Stevenson, who has made several presentations at SUNY Plattsburgh, most recently on renku poetry. During each visit to Plattsburgh, John would spend time meeting with aspiring haiku poets, giving them useful feedback on their poems. During the past year the society has given several readings of their work on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus and in the community. The society is sponsoring an Conference anthology, ba, with each conference participant encouraged to submit (by email) five previously unpublished haiku for consideration. The editors will select at least one haiku from each participant. Submit poems to haiku@plattsburgh.edu . In-hand deadline: May 1, 2008. For registration information, please see the conference section of this newsletter. Members are completing a collection of their haiku, senryu, haibun and renku works in Voyaging, Lake Champlain Regional Haiku and Related Forms. For information about the Lake Champlain-Adirondack Haiku Society contact: richschnell60@hotmail.com . —Rich Schnell Rochester, New YorkJanuary 2008. New York, New YorkJanuary 2008. Mid Atlantic RegionTowpathJanuary 2008. Central MarylandJanuary 2008. Richmond Haiku WorkshopJanuary 2008. SouthJanuary 2008. January 2008. January 2008. SoutheastNorth Carolina Haiku SocietyJanuary 2008. — Lenard D. Moore North Georgia Haiku SocietyJanuary 2008. —Marilyn Appl Walker Robert Frost Poetry Festival 2008 at Key West, FloridaThe 14th Annual Key West Robert Frost Poetry Festival will be held April 9–13th, 2008. The festival, set in the Heritage House Garden, Robert Frost Cottage, and at other select venues in Key West, again will feature poetry and haiku workshops, poetry and haiku readings, impromptu jazz and open mike, an art & film event, poetry on the water, a poetry slam, visual poetry exhibit, and international and Florida Key’s schools poetry and haiku contests. The festival concludes on Sunday afternoon with readings and contest award ceremonies. Featured poets are Dr. Michael Wyndham Thomas, Dr. Lee Gurga, Dr. Charles Trumbull, Cricket Desmarais, Catherine Doty, Barry George, and Richard Grusin. For information, registration, and contest details, write to The RFPF, 410 Caroline Street, Key West, Florida 33040, USA, or visit <http://www.robertfrostpoetryfestival.com/> —Charles Trumbull MidwestJanuary 2008. —Charles Trumbull Mississippi Mud DaubersJanuary 2008. —Submitted by John Dunphy SouthwestHaiku Poets of North TexasJanuary 2008. Forth Worth Haiku Society (Texas)January 2008. Fort Worth Haiku Society is gearing up to host the HSA's Spring Quarterly meeting. We have a number of excellent programs lined up. The meeting will be at the Residence Inn by Marriott in the Cultural District near downtown Fort Worth. They offer a shuttle for 5 miles around the hotel so people can easily get to the museums, the Japanese Garden, shopping etc. If you haven't reserved your room at the hotel, you need to do it soon. small canyons II has been published and we have copies available for sale. This anthology showcases the variety of talents of the poets of our Southwest Region. They sell for $10 and are available from Jim Applegate or Cliff Roberts. Information on ordering is available on the Southwest website: http://hometown.aol.com/graphicfantasy01/haikusouthwest.htm or email brephoenix@aol.com for more information. The Spring Festival at the Japanese Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth will be April 5 and 6, 2008. Fort Worth Haiku Society will once again take part in this event. —Brenda Roberts WashingtonWashington State Region January 2008. A big thank you to Terran Campbell for serving as Washington Regional Coordinator for the last two years. She made sure meeting rooms were booked, meeting reminders were sent out, and that each of our meetings ran smoothly. Highlights of the past year included a growing attendance at our meetings, and the September memorial reading we had for our late founder, Francine Porad, at the Bellevue Botanical Garden (organized by Connie Hutchison). Haiku Northwest was founded in 1988, so we’re commemorating our 20th anniversary in 2008. To celebrate, we’re planning a number of special events and projects this year. These include haiku performances, with shakuhachi and koto music by John and Elizabeth Falconer, at numerous local festivals (such as the Burning Word poetry festival, Folklife, Moonviewing, and Aki Matsuri); a haiku day at Seattle’s Japanese Garden; and hosting the June quarterly national meeting of the Haiku Society of America. We’ve also invited the growing Port Townsend haiku group to the Seattle area for a joint meeting in May, and we’ll go visit them in Port Townsend in the fall. In addition to these events, we have also done work on the following projects: First, we’ve been updating our Web site to include extensive features about our beloved Francine Porad. We’ve also included twenty-eight of her finest haiku, senryu, and tanka in “A Portrait of Francine: In Her Own Words,” compiled by Connie Hutchison. To read this content, please visit http://hometown.aol.com/ welchm/Haiku-Northwest-Porad-Obituary.html. Second, we’ve started an on- line collection of haiku by our members, with a short bio and up to five poems by each Washington State haiku poet who wishes to send work. We’ve got poems from twenty-one members already, with more to come! View this online collection at http://hometown.aol.com/welchm/Haiku-Northwest-Poems-By-Members.html, or visit the Haiku Northwest Web site at http://hometown.aol.com/welchm/Haiku-Northwest.html. Third, we’re putting together a directory of all haiku poets in Washington State (this includes quite a few more people than just HSA members). Thanks to Mike Myers for working on this, and thanks to Lane Dunlap for his help as well. We hope to increase membership, or at least let a wider number of people know about our special 20th anniversary events. Fourth, we’re working on a new Haiku Northwest online discussion and announcement list (thanks to Dejah Léger for help with this). Anyone is welcome to join. More information will be provided on the Haiku Northwest site soon. Fifth, this year Haiku Northwest volunteered to administer the Francine Porad Haiku Contest for the Washington Poets Association. Thanks to Angela Terry for receiving contest entries, which are due March 15, 2008 ($1 per poem). Information about entering is available elsewhere in this newsletter, or at http://www.washingtonpoets.org/2008_wpa_contest_guidelines_fpa.php. The Haiku Northwest group met for its first meeting of 2008—its 20th anniversary year—from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 10 at the Bellevue Regional Library in Bellevue, Washington. Present were Marilyn Sandall, Curtis R. Manley, Winifred Jaeger, Connie Hutchison, Helen Russell, Michael Dylan Welch, Mike Myers, Joan Stamm, Nu Quang, Ruth Yarrow, Dejah Léger, and Ida M. Freilinger, as well as Dana Ericson, who was a first-time guest, invited by Helen Russell (Helen mentioned that she recently celebrated her 98th birth-day!). Thanks to Ida Freilinger for serving as hostess, and having everyone sign an attendance sheet. We began with announcements and news, which included our newly posted collection of member haiku (thanks to Curtis Manley for collecting the bios and poems), Michael Myers' work on a new Haiku Northwest member directory, Dejah Léger's upcoming plans for a reading of music and sound haiku at the Folklife festival, and other upcoming events, including a potluck for our February meeting at the Seattle home of Nu Quang to celebrate the Lunar New Year. We then went around the room introducing ourselves and sharing a bit of personal news (thanks to Ruth Yarrow for the reminder that we share personal updates, which helps make our group particularly friendly!). We learned of each other’s recent operations, travels, awards, publications, and occasional family news. Next, we began our new meeting addition, to have a featured reader. Our first feature was Connie Hutchison, who, along with Mary Fran Meer, was one of the original members of the group when Francine Porad started Haiku Northwest in 1988. Connie read a fine mix of poems, and several members commented afterwards that they particularly enjoyed hearing a body of work from Connie. For her sequence, Connie reported she “wanted to share water and garden moments, balance and vary the senses each poem evokes, and be mindful of the flow of seasons.” Connie is particularly adept at sequencing poems, something she did when working with Francine on Brussels Sprout from 1988 to 1995 and on numerous Haiku Northwest anthologies. “When sequencing,” Connie says, “I always look for the thread of connection between poems. It might be a word or subject, a feeling or mood, a season or locale. I keep in mind a definition of haiku (whose author is unknown to me)—‘two images with lightning between them’—and I apply it to every poem and the one following to find that spark.” Here are three of the many poems Connie read:
For the bulk of our meeting, we had our usual round of haiku sharing. Each member brings photocopies of a set of haiku or senryu (sometimes tanka or haibun) and we share the copies around the room, which many members keep as a memento of the meeting. We take turns reading our poems, followed by comments and feed-back from others present. This time, because we had a well-attended meeting, we were able to read only three poems each, but they generated much lively discussion on juxtaposition, balancing objectivity and subjectivity, reordering lines, and other suggestions. Many poems this time featured topics from the holiday season, as well as the snow that had come to the Seattle area several times since our previous gathering. The meeting ended at 9:00 p.m. amid the usual loudspeaker announcement that the library was closing. —Michael Dylan Welch, Washington Regional Coordinator Oregon State RegionFebruary 2008. Members of the HSA Oregon Region met February 9 in the Honors College Library at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Members came from various parts of Oregon and were joined by members of the Oregon Haiku and Tanka Society and poets from the Eugene area. The event included two round robin readings, haikai readings by featured readers Johnny Baranski and Maggie Chula, a catered luncheon, and a discussion of upcoming plans and events. Not much news for the Oregon Haiku and Tanka Society this time around. Peter and an'ya are putting all their efforts right now into the literary newspaper moonset since the snow is keeping them office-bound. However, other members of the OhtS attended the Oregon Haiku Regional Meeting in Eugene, but an'ya and Peter were unable to attend due to snow in the mountain pass between La Pine and Eugene. —Ce Rosenow and an'ya CaliforniaYuki Teikei Haiku SocietyJanuary 2008. Much fun was had January 12, 2008 when June Hymas led our kukai at the San Jose History Park. Winter season words and the “first of anything” inspired our haiku. Jerry Ball won first place, Alison Woolpert won second place and donnalynn Chase, Linda Papanicolao, Carol Steele, Judith Schallberger and Ann Bendixen had a five-way tie for third place. Patrick Gallagher is the web master for Yuki Teikei’s web site. http://www.youngleaves.org —Respectfully Submitted, Ann Bendixen, Secretary and Jean Hale Haiku Poets of Northern CaliforniaJanuary 2008. For more information on HPNC and upcoming events, please visit our website: http://www.haiku-poets-northern-california.com/. —Susan Antolin and Paul O. Williams Central Valley Haiku ClubCentral Valley Haiku Club website: http://www.valleyhaiku.org/ February 2008. After the well received Haiku reading on Saturday, October 13, 2007, at the Folsom Gekkeikan Sake Factory, the members of the CVHC were crushed by the holiday crunch and the scheduled December meeting had to be canceled. But never fear, the members are now fully recovered and ready to meet with renewed vigor on Saturday, February 23, 2008, at the library in Antelope, California where they will forge ahead with the annual Jerry Kilbride Memorial 2008 English Language Haibun Contest, which is slated to be bigger and better than ever. In spite of the long hiatus, the CVHC members continue to share new poetry: winter thaw Orion and Mars set somewhere a wind chime —Respectfully submitted, Leslie Rose Southern California Haiku Study Group (SCHSG)January 2008. The SCHSG (Southern California Haiku Study Group) meets the third Saturday of each month at the Pacific Asia Mu-seum in Pasadena. Usually in attendance are ten or twelve members. Sometimes there is a side trip to a different location which is always fun. On Sunday, January 6, 2008, the rainiest day Southern Cali-fornia has had in a decade, and although not a Saturday, a group of members met at Wendy and Tom Wright’s home in Naples, adjacent to the Long Beach har-bor. Between the raindrops, we all arrived safely. Needless to say, we canceled the beach walk. But it was delightful to sit around and visit while we engaged in the art of eating delicious food. The following poets gathered: Michael Evans, Murray Thomas, Tom Bilicke, Inez, Janis and Ed Lukstein, Debbie Kolodji, Naia, Vic Gendrano, Peggy Hehman-Smith, and Kathy Wilson. We had a read-around of any style poetry we chose: long poetry, short poetry, haiku, haibun, cin-quain. Some authors gave out booklets of their poetry. Vic Gendrano had a contest for published poetry books. Wendy gave us small sachets from Japan. After the readings, Kathy’s hus-band Rick, a fine musician, played two lovely tunes on his antique clarinet accompanied by Kathy on hand-held drums. The evening ended too soon. And as Wendy said, we took away with us the feeling of harmony. snow moon Michael Evans tai chi Darrell Byrd golden gingko Janis Lukstein evening warmth Deborah Kolodji —Respectfully submitted by Peggy Hehman-Smith AlaskaJanuary 2008. |
