HaikuNow! Contest Opens Today

by Dave Russo on January 6, 2012

We are pleased to announce the start of our third annual HaikuNow! contest today! Prizes will be awarded for English-language haiku in three categories: traditional, contemporary and innovative. Please see the main HaikuNow! page for deadlines and other requirements.

Our two final judges are Jane Hirshfield and Jim Kacian. Many of you will know Jane from her poetry collections (After), her essays (Nine Gates, Entering the Mind of Poetry) and her translations (Ink Dark Moon, with Mariko Aratani). Haiku poets will be particularly interested in Jane’s Kindle Single called The Heart of Haiku. For months, this little book was Amazon’s highest-selling poetry book or poetry-related book in any format.

We look forward to receiving your poems!

Haiku in the new year

by Gene Myers on January 4, 2012

Don Wentworth is the editor of Lilliput Review and author of Issa’s Untidy Hut. Responding to my question  ”What are your hopes for American haiku over the next year?” Don offered this:

 

chatting on the porch,
two sparrows flitting
in autumn mist

 

He added,  ”I do hope, and wish, for clear moments of insight & revelation for each and every individual who writes a haiku (and reads one) in America over the next year.”

Seems like a good way to end this series of blog posts on hopes for haiku in the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Gene

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We Want YOU!

by Jim Kacian on January 1, 2012

We Want YOU! to be an editor of Per Diem in 2012.

The Per Diem feature is our daily poem, and we’ve had a great run with the database that Jack Galmitz and Paul Pfleuger created in 2009, but it’s time for some new material. What we have in mind is a series of monthly collections, each with a theme. To provide an example, we’ve created “A Haiku Bestiary” to run in January. All the poems chosen incorporate an animal—no birds, no insects, in this case—and had the further goal of revealing something about the animal itself, and not just some anthropomorphized view of it. Traditionally a bestiary will follow the alphabet, with one animal for each letter. Some can prove quite challenging, and we admit we cheated: the “X” animal, for instance, is “oXen”. Also, there are 31 days in January and only 26 letters in English, so some “popular” letters make more than one appearance. We hope the result will not only entertain you and reveal some excellent poems that you may or may not be aware of, but also stimulate discussion and consideration of animal being, and our relationship to it.

Not all themes need to carry in this way, of course, and in fact what we really hope for is variety. We’ll be considering themes from anyone who wishes to participate. What you need to do is:

1) choose a theme (haiku bestiary, in our example)

2) provide some idea of how the theme would work (showing animals as themselves, not anthropomorphized)

We’ll help you choose a month that’s not spoken for, and can help you get raw materials for your selections through generous accessibility to the Haiku Database created by Charlie Trumbull. We can also discuss your theme in more detail as you are developing it for airing on the Per Diem site. And we’ll work toward a deadline so your work is received in a timely fashion.

We hope you’re excited by the possibilities of sharing some favorite poems and a theme that is important to you with other haiku poets and readers during 2012.

If you’d like to become an editor for Per Diem, use the Contact page send your theme and explication, and even a sample poem or two. We look forward to your ideas for our daily poems!

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Scott Metz: hopes for English-language haiku in the new year

by Gene Myers on December 28, 2011

One of the greatest gifts I was given in 2011 was given to me by Michael Dylan Welch when he invited me to Haiku North America. I filled one notebook after another taking notes at each presentation.

Two of the realizations that came to me during Richard Gilbert’s presentation were centered around Scott Metz: One, I really love his work and two, his poems seem important in the haiku world.

Like Wallace Stevens’ jar on a hill, Metz’ work changes English-language haiku with its presence. While many have noticed the bird and bush, Metz has clearly also studied and continued to build upon the foundation that modern poetry has given us.

“My hopes for English-language haiku in this year of the dragon (2012) is applicable, really, to any future that it has,” writes Metz in an email reply to my question, “What are your hopes for American haiku over the next year?”

He continues…

One of my hopes is that the aesthetics and techniques—the poetics—that have become traditional (classical?), and entrenched, in English-language haiku (with all its wonderful and creative misreadings, limitations, misinterpretations and ahistorical stances) continue to flourish and intensify, and deepen. With an emphasis on transparency (and directness) of language, simplicity, plainness, literalism, direct experience, season words, and “ordinary reality”, a remarkable, timeless foundation has been created.

Another one of my hopes for English-language haiku is that it will continue to diversify and evolve; that poets will continue to play (the hai in haiku) artistically (with language, modi operandi, imagery, structure, culture, media, history, literature), go where they need to go—go where they must go—and continue to question and resist. I’m excited to see the unchartered territories the art form ventures into, the nu/neu/neo directions, worlds, microclimates, seasons and infusions created and encapsulated—both the beautiful failures as well as the successful experiments. . . . And that by utilizing the first eight centuries or so of ku (from renga and uta to hokku, senryū and haiku) we can continue to refresh, renew, strengthen and expand this unique and extraordinary global literature.

In addition, I hope that not only will English-language haiku become more integrated and fused with the larger poetic world (as it is, in fact, beginning to), but that it will become more infused with American, English-language and Western poetics by its authors.

I look forward to the craft and artistry and invitations in everyone’s poems: all the doors and windows left open and/or cracked, all the lights on in the attics, all the latches and locks left undone. I hope for more of all of it and thank everyone for sharing it.


Scott Metz is the editor of Roadrunner. With Lee Gurga, he co-edited Haiku 21: an anthology of contemporary English-language haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 2011). He is the author of lakes & now wolves (Modern Haiku Press, 2012).

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Hopes for American haiku in the next year by Michael Dylan Welch

by Gene Myers on December 19, 2011

“What are your hopes for American haiku in the next year?” It may have been an awkward question, but many gave it some thought and came up with good answers. In this post Michael Dylan Welch gets a turn.

I would hope for more American haiku poets to see the value in joining organizations like the Haiku Society of America. I think we currently have about 700 members, give or take, and I recall that our highest numbers were once about 850, during better economic times. But I dare say we should be able to top 1000, and even 3000, given the number of people out there, just in the United States, who are actively writing haiku with a literary intent.

More important, though, I hope everyone continues to write and enjoy haiku, and share it with each other as a means of emotional and experiential connection. By sharing haiku, we make ourselves vulnerable to each other, even if just slightly, and this shared vulnerability has the potential to bring us closer together. I find this to be one of haiku poetry’s most endearing and long-lasting attractions.

Michael Dylan Welch is a contributing editor to both Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society and Juxtapositions: The Journal of Haiku Poetics and Culture, and is a founding associate of The Haiku Foundation. He cofounded the Haiku North America conference, now a nonprofit corporation of which he is a director. In 1996 he cofounded the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, the world’s largest public haiku archive outside Japan, and currently serves on its advisory board and as webmaster for its website. In 2000, he founded the Tanka Society of America, also serving as its president for five years. Michael is currently first vice president of the Haiku Society of America. In 2010, Michael created NaHaiWriMo, or National Haiku Writing Month, which was first held in February of 2011.

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