Southwest

Southwest Region

This region includes Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.

The Southwest region has relatively few haiku poets over its large area, but a few of its poets can claim to have significant influence on haiku poetry.

Santa Fe, New Mexico was for many years the home of Elizabeth Searle Lamb, charter member and former president of the Haiku Society of America, and longtime edit of the society’s flagship journal, Frogpond. Santa Fe was also home to William J. Higginson, another HSA charter member and former president, and his wife, Penny Harter, also a former president. Together, these poets have had a huge impact on English-language haiku, especially Higginson with his landmark books: The Haiku Handbook (originally published in 1985, and now available in a 25th anniversary edition), The Haiku Seasons, and Haiku World (both 1996). New Mexico is also home to haiku pioneer John Brandi, and has also recently become the home of Charles Trumbull’s journal Modern Haiku, the oldest and most prestigious journal for haiku and haiku studies outside Japan.

In Texas, the Fort Worth Haiku Society was founded by Cliff Roberts. The group held events for many years, including hosting a national quarterly meeting of the Haiku Society of America, but has recently disbanded. However, the Haiku Poets of North Texas began in 2007 under the leadership of Susan Delphine Delaney. In recent years, Jim Applegate has published several volumes of the Small Canyons Anthology, which welcomes haiku contributions from anyone in the region. If you would like more information about haiku activity in the region, please contact the Southwest regional coordinator.

Regional Links

Modern Haiku
http://www.modernhaiku.org/

John Brandi
http://www.tetramatrix.com/websites/johnbrandi/

Elizabeth Searle Lamb
http://americanhaikuarchives.org/curators/
ElizabethSearleLamb.html

William J. Higginson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J_Higginson

Join the HSA

http://www.hsa-haiku.org/join.htm

Regional Coordinator

Jim Applegate
601 Fulkerson Dr.
Roswell, NM 88203-4127

<japple@dfn.com>

Jim Applegate is a retired research engineer and chemist. He was born and grew up in Cedar City, Utah where he graduated from Southern Utah University and did grad school at BYU. He and his wife have four grown children and twelve grandchildren. Jim is currently a tour guide at the International UFO Museum and Research Center, a docent at the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and chancellor for New Mexico State Poetry Society. Jim first started to write poetry and science fiction in high school and at SUU, and took up writing again when he retired. Since then he has published more than 100 poems and four short stories with a small local publisher. In the past four years he has edited and published the annual Small Canyons Anthology for the Southwest region and invited anyone interested to submit.

one star seen through fog
bids the world not to mourn
for the sky still is

pregnant country girl
claims he came from a saucer
very strange baby

mini-murder of grackles
white stain my new car