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The HSA appreciates your continued support and your participation in society activities. As primary supplement to the HSA website, this monthly report strives to bring you news from the Executive Committee and the Regional Chapters.
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|  On May 28, the HSA organized a session titled Interdisciplinary Approaches to American Haiku at the American Literature Association's annual conference in San Francisco. I chaired the panel on behalf of our former president, David Lanoue, who couldn't attend due to a schedule conflict. The scheduled speakers were, Ce Rosenow, Eve Luckring and Ian Marshall. Unfortunately, Ce could not attend the conference due to a sudden illness (thankfully not serious). Our local member, Beverly Acuff Momoi, read Ce's paper on her behalf. You will find a brief report by Beverly in this newsletter. In addition to our regional quarterly meetings, we encourage our members to attend other haiku events to deepen their haiku knowledge and to promote haiku to non-members.
At the ALA haiku panel, I learned the word, 'geophony' (meaning sounds, such as wind and waves, produced by non-living elements of the natural world) from a speech by Ian Marshall. Since 'wind' or 'rain' are geophony, I went to my Japanese saijiki to seek further inspiration.
There are many summer wind kigo in Japanese.
黒南風 (kurohae - black south wind): south wind during June rainy season
白南風 (shirohae - white south wind): south wind after June rainy season
黄雀風（k�jakuf� - yellow sparrow wind: south east wind during May and June
There is no 梅雨 ('tsuyu' - plum rain), a rainy season in June, in San Francisco where I live. But 'kurohae' helps me go back to my Tokyo days when I tried to find a snail among hydrangeas on the way to school, or became disgusted by mold on my food during a month-long rainy season. 'Shirohae' makes me think about the white shirt I wore in middle school and the sails floating in San Francisco Bay. The last one, 'k�jakuf�' may be the most interesting. Ancient Chinese believed that when this 'yellow sparrow wind' - a wet wind - blows, fish change themselves into sparrows. The sea might have become too hot for fish and they would have escaped to the sky. Sometimes I am glad to belong to a very imaginative culture.
The following Japanese kigo related to 'rain' may be impossible to use in English haiku. No one will know what these kigo are about.
薬降る (kusuri furu - medicine rain)
May 5 on the lunar calendar was called 'kusuribi' (medicine day). Ancient people believed medicine was effective if one used raindrops gathered in bamboo joints to dissolve it. Also, it was believed, when rain fell on that day, all kinds of harvests would be abundant in the following year.
虎が雨 (tora ga ame - Lady Tora's rain)
Soga brothers were slain on May 28 on the lunar calendar after slashing their father's killer 20 years after his death. Lady Tora, a lover of one of the brothers, shed tears for their deaths and the rain on that day was then called 'Tora's rain.' This story has been popular in Kabuki and Bunraku, the Japanese puppet theater.
I am not a nature person and I don't go hiking or kayaking. In a way I am a 'desk-haiku' poet. However, a ginko - haiku walk - coordinated by HSA local groups would be a great opportunity for you to get inspiration and write haiku. When I was in Tokyo in April, my Japanese friend invited me to a mini-ginko in the park. At the pond, we met a group of people with their big cameras. They wore jackets with 'Kingfisher Photo Club' logo. I was told they normally would wait for a few hours until a kingfisher, which was rare in Tokyo, came to the pond. In a way, we, haiku poets, are luckier than those amateur photographers. If we cannot encounter a precious kingfisher (a summer kigo), we can write about the absence of it. 'Silence' can be a great element of haiku geophony.
ocean wind
goldfish waits for the cue
to change into a sparrow
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Haiku Poets
of Northern California
The Haiku Poets of Northern California met for our spring quarterly meeting on April 17, 2016 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The following people were present: Mimi Ahearn, Susan Antolin, Betty Arnold, Stephanie Baker, Sherry Barto, Lynda Beigel, Chuck Brickley, Bruce Feingold, Abigail Friedman, Garry Gay, David Grayson, Carolyn Hall, June Hymas, Deborah P Kolodji, Patricia Machmiller, Beverly Acuff Momoi, Ren�e Owen, Linda Papanicolaou, Cheryl Pfeil, Sharon Pretti, Carol Steele, and Joan Zimmerman.
After welcoming everyone to the spring meeting, Garry introduced our featured reader, Sharon Pretti, who has been writing and publishing poetry for many years (primarily haiku for the past three years). She lives in San Francisco and works as a medical social worker at Laguna Honda Hospital. Her favorite part of her job is running a bi-weekly poetry workshop for the patients. She has also led poetry groups for seniors at several Bay Area assisted living facilities. Sharon performed her reading entirely without notes and introduced each grouping of poems with a few words of context and back story. From her reading:
further into
the same war
white breath on the window
Acorn 34 Spring 2015
After the reading, we went around the circle with a round of introductions and haiku. Garry then made several announcements, including that our spring meeting happened to fall this year on International Haiku Poetry Day. Garry passed around a tri-fold flier with the results of the 2016 San Francisco International Rengay Contest, for which he served as the judge. Top prize this year went to Michael Dylan Welch and Sonja Arntzen. Second place went to Stephanie Baker, Sherry Barto and Chuck Brickley, all of whom were present and read their winning rengay to the group. Full results and judge's comments can be found on the HPNC website at www.hpnc.org. Bruce Feingold then announced that the Touchstone Award results were available on the Haiku Foundation website with a number of poems by HPNC members, including one by Patricia Machmiller, who was present at the meeting and recited her winning haiku.
Garry mentioned that long-time HPNC member Tom Tico passed away (see the previous newsletter for a brief memorial note), and shared a few of his memories of Tom from back in the days when HPNC would meet in members' homes. Chuck Brickley and Sue Antolin also shared a few words about Tom, particularly noting his complete devotion to haiku and his thoughtfulness in reaching out to new poets.
Carolyn Hall announced that New Zealand poet Sandra Simpson will be in the Bay Area in July and would very much like to get together with local haiku poets while she is here. Carolyn will host a gathering at her Santa Rosa home on July 10, and there may also be a chance to go out to dinner with Sandra on the following day in San Francisco. Please contact Carolyn for details.
Garry reminded the group that the Two Autumns reading will be on August 28 and will feature Michele Root-Bernstein, June Hymas, Michael Sheffield and Robert Gilliland. Mark your calendars for this special event! Garry also shared a few details about the annual Haiku Circle event hosted by vincent tripi, Joyce Clement, Jeannie Martin, and Peter Newton in Northfield, MA. Patricia Machmiller and Debbie Kolodji, both of whom have attended the event in the past, said it is an excellent day full of haiku lectures, workshops, readings, and socializing and is well worth the trip. Details online at haikucircle.com. Garry then mentioned the Ukaih Haiku festival and contest, in which he won an honorable mention this year. He then passed around a copy of Ernest J. Berry's new book Getting On (Red Moon Press, 2016), a collection of poems that won or placed in some international competition between 1995 and 2005.
Following a break for food and socializing, Susan Antolin introduced our special guest, Abigail Friedman, visiting from Washington, D.C. Abigail began composing haiku while living in Japan as the only non-Japanese member of a haiku group. Her book, The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japapn, captures that experience. When she returned to the U.S., she continued writing haiku, making the transition to writing poetry in English. In 2006, she moved to Quebec City, where she founded a French/English bilingual haiku group. She now lives in Northern Virginia and just this year founded another haiku group, the SuperNOVA Haiku Group (that's a pun because NOVA is the acronym for Northern Virginia). Abigail has won many awards including first prize in the 2014 Mainichi haiku contest. In addition to The Haiku Apprentice, her other books include I Wait for the Moon (a translation of the work of contemporary haiku master Momoko Kuroda) and Street Chatter Fading, a collection of Abigail's own poetry. All three books were available for sale at the meeting. Abigail presented a talk entitled Reading Haiku Beyond Borders, along with accompanying PowerPoint slides with the haiku she referenced throughout the lecture. This talk was adapted from one that she first gave last fall to a Japanese audience, when she was the keynote speaker at the 25th anniversary of AOI, a Japanese nationwide haiku organization.
In part one of her talk, Abigail discussed universality in haiku, providing several examples of haiku that are easy to understand regardless of cultural differences. These haiku are accessible; anyone can read these poems and be inspired. Haiku with universal appeal are often image-based, allow the reader to imagine what is described, and resonate at a primal level. One of the many examples she provided is this one by Basho: "on a withered branch / a crow sits / autumn evening". Some haiku, though not image-based, still have universal appeal, such as this one by Shiki: "I who am going / and you who remain / two autumns".
Next, Abigail addressed cultural perspectives in haiku, noting that our cultural vantage point influences our reading and writing of haiku. Abigail's own haiku "window closed, / up to the seventh floor / cascading cries of the cicada" provided a good example of how readers from different cultures can interpret a haiku differently. For Abigail, the sound of the cicada was an annoyance, made all the more so in that it penetrated the closed window all the way up on the seventh floor. Japanese readers, however, do not consider the sound of the cicada to be an annoyance but rather an appealing and beautiful sound, so this haiku was confusing to them. Other haiku she discussed relied on knowledge of cultural mythology to fully understand or at least required an appreciation of another culture's associations with particular landscapes (that walking out into the snow-covered terrain in Quebec would convey a sense of home rather than of danger, for example) for the intended meaning to come through.
In the last part of her talk, Abigail discussed the individual in haiku, asking, "How much do we need to know of the personal context of the poet to understand a haiku?" While you do not always need to know the individual context, haiku are often made richer if you do know something about the poet's circumstances. For this haiku by Momoko Kuroda, "village of my youth- / that distant mountain cherry / this child evacuee", it helps to know that the poet was six years old during the fire bombings of Tokyo and was evacuated to the small town of Nasu, where she spent years in the countryside. When she would look at distant cherry trees, she thought they were blooming just for her. Kuroda wrote this haiku in her 70s, which also reminds us that haiku do not have to always come from the poet's immediate circumstances, but can also come from memory. In her concluding remarks, Abigail noted that while the haiku we love on first reading are wonderful, the haiku that take a little more work to love also give us much to enjoy. Abigail's talk was very well-received and her visit to San Francisco to meet with us was much appreciated by all. We hope she will come again soon!
In other news after the spring meeting, a group of HPNC members attended a haiku panel at the American Literature Association conference in San Francisco on May 28. Eve Luckring and Ian Marshall presented papers and Bev Momoi stepped in to read a talk by Ce Rosenow, who was unable to attend. A group, including Eve, Bev, Fay Aoyagi, David Grayson, Patrick Gallagher, Susan Antolin, and Bev's husband, Kat Momoi, went out to dinner afterwards at the Plant Caf� on Pier 3.
The following are recently published books by HPNC members: Street Chatter Fading, a new collection of Abigail Friedman's haiku, published in letterpress by Larkspur Press; Discovering Fire, David Grayson's first collection of essays and haiku, published by Red Moon Press; Getting On, a new collection of award-winning haiku by Ernest J. Berry, also published by Red Moon Press; UNBOUND, Cheryl Pfeil's new collection of letterpress haiku cards, included in the North Bay Letterpress Art Show at Kitty Hawk Gallery in Sebastopol, June 4-July 26; and Bamboo Secrets: One Woman's Quest through the Shadows of Japan, by Patricia Dove Miller published in May 2016 by Illuminated Owl Press.
Submitted by Susan Antolin  Haiku San Diego
(Southern California)
April 10, 2016, Haiku San Diego (HSD) Regular Monthly Meeting. Few of us braved the blustery, winter-like weather and freeway accidents to meet, but meet we did. Attendees: Naia (facilitator), Anita Guenin, and Claudia Poquoc.
May 8, 2016, Haiku San Diego (HSD) Regular Monthly Meeting. Attendees: Naia (facilitator), Scott Galasso, Anita Guenin, Carol Judkins, Karen Stromberg, and drop-in guest Don Witmer.
Robert Witmer's latest book, Finding A Way, was gifted to our group by his brother, Don Witmer. Don joined our meeting to introduce us to Robert's new book and tell us a bit about Robert and his approach to haiku. We were so pleased to welcome Don. Members are sharing Finding A Way so that we all have a chance to connect with and enjoy Robert's haiku. (Robert Witmer lives in Tokyo, Japan, with his wife Aiko. They have two children, Layla and Alex. Robert teaches at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, where he has worked for the past 35 years. His book was published in April 2016 and is available at Amazon-dot-com, among other places.)
Our April and May two-month topic built upon, yet shifted from, March's study of The "Simple" Haiku: Complex Crafting and the Impression after the Words Fall Away. Over the course of the two months we discussed Meaning in Haiku, the title of a Charles Trumbull article in Frogpond 35.3, pages 92-115. We explored the two questions he posed to himself when editor of Modern Haiku:
1. What does "meaning" mean?
2. What meaning do I expect from a haiku?
Our discussion encompassed the issues of
* the feeling of meaning, and its intangible nature,
* readily graspable meaning,
* coloration to plain sense writing that deepens but doesn't change the image,
* too much meaning,
* spoon-fed meaning,
* purely descriptive language,
* a question asked by John Ciardi, who, in Trumbull's words, "asks not what a poem means but rather how a poem means" and the devices used to bring power to the poetry, not to the meaning per se, and
* the wordless poem - what we are left with when the words fall away.
During the final segment of our April and May meetings, HSD members participated in an anonymous haiku workshop.
submitted by Naia
Temecula, CA
Southern California
Haiku Study Group
On May 15, 2016, Susan Rogers organized a ginko and haiku reading with tea at the Whispering Pines Tea House in Glendale (shoseianteahouse.com). Tea service was coordinated by Ginna Claire Nguyen. Shoseian is located in Brand Park,1601 West Mountain Street, was built in 1974 through combined efforts of the Sister Cities of Glendale and Higashi-Osaka, Japan is one of the few traditional Japanese Teahouses open to the public in the United States. Spearheaded by Mrs. Otto Neufeld, local Glendale educator and prominent citizen, the Teahouse represents the spirit of goodwill, lasting peace and friendship between the people of Japan and the United States. Given the name "Shoseian" or "Whispering Pine Teahouse" by the Fifteenth Grand Tea Master of the Urasenke School of Tea in Japan, the Teahouse is designated an official Tearoom. Dr.Yamazaki of Higashi-Osaka provided initial support for the Teahouse and Gardens. The Teahouse design is by architect Hayahiko Takase. |
| | Susan Rogers in front of the Whispering Pines Tea House, Glendale, CA |
Susan Rogers, Mary Torregrossa, Kimberly Esser, Chris Wesley, D'Ellen, Deborah P Kolodji, Peggy Castro, Yvette Nicole Kolodji, Patricia Wakimoto, Toni Steele, and Sharon Yee were among the haiku readers. Chris Wesley accompanied the readers on guitar.
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| | Peggy Castro (left), D'Ellen in the Whispering Pines Tea House |
On May 21, 2016, the monthly workshop was coordinated by Greg Longenecker, who led a writing session on one-liners. Participants brought 3 line haiku that they wanted to workshop into one-line haiku. The meeting was attended by Marcia Behar, Elva Lauter, Wakako Rollinger, Kim Esser, James Won, Bill Hart, Lynn Algood, Janis Lukstein, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, and Greg Longenecker. The June 18th workshop will be the last Southern California Haiku Study Group workshop at the museum for about a year. The Pacific Asia Museum is closing down for seismic retrofits. It is anticipated to re-open in June of 2017. Meanwhile, the SCHSG will continue meeting monthly. The August 2018 meeting, with special guest David Lanoue, will take place at the Whispering Pines Tea House in Brand Park in Glendale on August 20th. The location of the July 16th meeting is yet to be announced.
The deadline to submit to the annual SCHSG anthology is June 15.
submitted by Deborah P Kolodji |
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Remember to register for the Regional conference in Portland, Oregon, August 12th-14th. The conference has events Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. You are, however, perfectly welcome to attend just one or two days. The conference will offer workshops, anthology readings, fun dinners, and a guided tour of a Japanese garden. See the HSA Oregon Website for details: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/meetings.htm or contact Shelley Baker-Gard at sbakergard@msn.com. Good News
No registration fee. Oregon HSA members are continuing to meet in their close-to-home poetry groups, and as many as possible will be at the conference to welcome the poets attending from out of state and elsewhere within the state. We hope to see you here!
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The Ohaio-ku Study Group met Saturday, May 14, at the Cuyahoga Falls Library with nine members in attendance: Susan Mallernee , Phyllis Lee , Jill Lange , Joe McKeon , Kevin Rainwater , Holli Rainwater , Nancy Brady Smith , Valentina Ranaldi-Adams and Julie Warther. We discussed some of our favorite poems from the most recent Frogpond, workshopped some of our own haiku, held a kukai and a reading. Congratulations to the winners of the first Ohaio-ku Monthly Kukai.
1st place: Holli Rainwater
2nd place: Susan Mallernee
3rd place: Julie Warther.
Winners received copies of Mayfly journal, generously supplied by Joe McKeon.
The next meeting of the Ohaio-ku Study Group will be held Saturday, June 11, 2016 from 10am - noon at the Cuyahoga Fall Library in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. HSA member, Don Fulmer, will present a program incorporating haiku and Native American flute music.
"Haiku is a Japanese poetic form originating in the 17th century. The ancestors of Native American flutes date back at least 1500 years, with the "modern" style flute appearing in the early 19th century. Two very different forms of expression from two very different cultures, yet they beautifully combine to express and share our experiences and emotions. Come join us to learn about and listen to the combination of haiku and Native American flute. Have fun writing haiku and listening to flute music inspired by your writing."
In coordination with the flute program, we will hold a kukai with the theme, "Wind". Following the reading of each entry, Don will provide a flute response.
Contact Julie Warther at wartherjulie@gmail.com for further information.  CAR POOLS
Chicago to Mineral Point, Wisconsin for the Cradle of American Haiku Festival
Car pools from the Chicago area to the Cradle of American Haiku Festival in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, are being organized. Cars will be leaving around noon on Friday, August 5, and returning after lunch on Sunday, August 7. Travel expenses will be shared. If interested, contact Mike Kozubek at mkozubek@att.net Digregorio Exhibits
In Illinois
Charlotte Digregorio, Illinois Member, is honored to have two exhibits of her haiku/haiku sequences that will run through the first week of 2017. The first, from July 8 through Sept. 30, will be held in Schaumburg, IL at Meet Chicago Northwest, (the Greater Woodfield Convention and Visitors Bureau). The second exhibit will be from Oct. 1, 2016 through Jan 7, 2017 at Rolling Meadows Public Library in Rolling Meadows, IL. In addition, Charlotte recently hosted a poetry program, sponsored by Highland Park (IL) Poetry, at Madame ZuZu's Tea House in Highland Park. The program featured a guest poet and an open mic. During the latter, she read some of her haiku. submitted by Charlotte Digregorio
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Northeast Metro
Summer Meeting
Saturday, June 11, 2016, 2:30-5:30 p.m. Westbeth Center for the Arts, Community Room, 155 Bank Street
Community Room is directly to the left when you enter at 155 Bank Street)
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Program:
Reconnection
Unfortunately, due to space rental difficulties, we were unable to have a spring meeting. So let's reconnect by drawing on what we learned from Kazuko Nishimura at our October meeting. We will hold a traditional haiku contest. Each attendee will bring two favorite haiku they've written, and by the end of the contest we will have three overall favorites, whose winners will discuss their writing process.
Intermission
Announcements: haiku news, new projects, upcoming events, HSA 50th anniversary plans
Workshop
Working on something that's almost there but not quite? Need feedback to help move along the process? This is your chance to read a haiku-in-progress to a receptive group of fellow poets and get the advice and constructive criticism that will hopefully turn your unfinished work into a polished poem.
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For all who are interested, we will go to dinner after the meeting, at around 6:00 p.m., at The Hudson Hound, an Irish bar/restaurant located at 575 Hudson Street between West 11th Street & Bank Street.
Try to RSVP to Rita for dinner NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, JUNE 3.
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On May 26-29, 2016, the American Literature Association held its 27th annual conference at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, CA, and included a panel organized by the Haiku Society of America. On Saturday, May 28, HSA President Fay Aoyagi chaired a panel on Interdisciplinary Approaches to American Haiku that included papers by HSA members Ce Rosenow, Eve Luckring and Ian Marshall. Ce Rosenow was unable to attend due to illness, but her paper, A Careful Poetics: Caring Imagination, Caring Habits and Haiku, was read by Beverly Acuff Momoi. It discussed feminist philosopher Maurice Hamington's work on care ethics and examined how haiku - through its use of image - can develop caring habits in the reader. Eve Luckring presented Video-Renku: Link and Shift in Visual Language, exploring how film montage techniques can be employed to link and shift visually, in ways that are similar to renku. Video-poems from Luckring's The Junicho Video-Renku Book provided intriguing examples of how visual and sonic juxtaposition can work. Ian Marshall's discussion of The Sound of Water: An Acoustic Ecology of Haiku featured more than a dozen haiku from Allan Burns' anthology, Where the River Goes. He looked at the frequency of haiku about the biophony and the geophony, and the range of ways sound was represented - from rain to waterfalls to falling dew in James Hackett's The sound of the sun.
After the presentations, there was some discussion, including the observation that the three talks were complementary, adding depth to each other. Sue Antolin, Patrick Gallagher, David Grayson and Kat Momoi joined the panelists and continued the discussion over dinner at a nearby restaurant.
submitted by Beverly Acuff Momoi
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Lee Gurga travelled to Tokyo recently where he and David Burleigh spoke to Hasegawa Kai's Koshi Haiku Group on April 19th. Gurga's talk was entitled Japanese Haiku and Contemporary English-Language Haiku. Burleigh spoke on English Haiku in Japan. After his talk, Gurga was interviewed by a reporter from the Asahi Newspaper, which published an article on his presentation.
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Newspaper article about Gurga's talk to Kai Hasegawas haiku group
April 19 2016
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submitted by Lee Gurga
Last November, The National Institute of Japanese Literature in Tokyo gave a symposium on haiku. Speakers familiar to HSA members include Lee Gurga, Toshio Kimura, and Michael Fessler. Gurga spoke on Japanese Haiku and Contemporary English-Language Haiku, Kimura gave a survey of international haiku in English, and Fessler gave a talk titled The Pound Paradigm.
All three talks are included in the
Conference on Japanese Literature that has just been published by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.
 submitted by Lee Gurga
On April 17 (International Haiku Poetry Day), Amy Losak co-presented a haiku workshop at the Queens Botanical Garden in NY ( queensbotanical.org). She and teacher Sachiko Clayton provided a brief overview of the form and read a selection of haiku, including several of Sydell Rosenberg's, Amy's mother (a charter member of the Haiku Society America in 1968 and Secretary in 1975; 1929-1996). Participants were then encouraged to tour the grounds and write their own haiku which were then discussed in the workshop. After this session, Amy read Sydell's haiku and senryu (as well as a few longer poems) in a separate poetry reading. The panel was made up a wonderful roster of local poets, including Queens Poet Laureate, Maria Lisella.
For the second consecutive year, Amy has sponsored this workshop in Queens, where Sydell lived, worked, wrote and raised her family. Amy spearheads other creative initiatives to bring Syd's work to new and mostly young audiences, including a successful partnership with the NY nonprofit arts education organization, Arts For All ( arts-for-all.org). Haiku are used to teach the basics of drawing, painting and music to second grade students at a school in the Bronx and a school in Queens. Amy has also submitted a haiku picture book manuscript to several publishers and is working with Swale ( swaleny.org), an organization that is building a floating food forest on a barge, to integrate poetry into this project to bring fresh, natural food to the public. |
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Ignatius Fay
HSA NEWS Editor
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