How often does Haiku Northwest meet?

We meet monthly, on the first Thursday evening of the month, usually at the Bellevue Regional Library in Bellevue, Washington, just east of Seattle. Because library meeting rooms are not always available (especially in the spring), we sometimes meet elsewhere, so we encourage you to join our e-mail list to receive meeting announcements and reminders. Our Events page on this site also gives basic location information, but e-mail reminders provide the most up-to-date and complete details.

How do I join Haiku Northwest?

If you’d like to join our e-mail list, send an e-mail message with your request to Michael Dylan Welch at WelchM@aol.com. That’s all there is to joining Haiku Northwest! We have no membership dues, and anyone is always welcome to join any of our events. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced poet, you are welcome to join us. Haiku Northwest is a regional group of the Haiku Society of America, but you do not need to be a member of the HSA to be a member of Haiku Northwest.

What are Haiku Northwest meetings like?

Our meetings focus mainly on the sharing and critiquing of haiku offered on sheets of paper that members pass around and read aloud. We usually include our names on the poems, so the discussion is not anonymous, except for occasional special workshops. Our workshopping focus helps us improve our poetry as we share and comment on our poetry. If it’s your first time, you are welcome to just observe and listen, or to chime in as the spirit moves. Poets of all experience levels are always welcome, and our regular meetings are always free.

What else happens are your meetings?

We typically have a featured reader, who reads for about five minutes, usually one of our local members, but sometimes a visiting poet, who is usually given up to ten minutes to read. We also share news and announcements, and then have as many rounds of reading and critiquing of attendee poems as time allows. We make sure to get to every poet. Each poet typically brings a sheet of about five or more haiku or senryu (occasionally tanka or a haibun) to distribute to the group (usually fifteen copies is sufficient). Occasionally, someone brings cookies or some other snack, or we share a bit of personal news. The group started in 1988, and for many years we met at the home of founder Francine Porad (who passed away in 2006), and the group’s meetings retain that comfortable and friendly living-room feeling. Now and then we spend some time planning or discussing various events, but we try to keep the primary focus on sharing, discussing, and improving our poems. We sit in a circle together and are a friendly and welcoming group!

Do you have special events or other activities in addition to monthly meetings?

Yes, often. Twice a year, the Seattle-area haiku group meets with the Port Townsend haiku group for a weekend activity, often involving writing haiku outdoors, and an afternoon of sharing, performing, and discussion. We have also hosted national meetings of the Haiku Society of America, supported one Haiku North America conference, and performed our haiku on local radio and at Folklife, Aki Matsuri, and other local festivals. In 2008 and 2009, we had our first and second weekend haiku retreats in Seabeck, Washington, at the Seabeck Conference Center. We occasionally have activities at the Seattle Japanese Garden, and our members offer workshops or give haiku readings at many venues throughout Seattle and the Puget Sound area.

Does Haiku Northwest represent any particular type or style of haiku?

Haiku Northwest is the Washington state region of the Haiku Society of America. The HSA welcomes all styles and approaches to haiku, as does Haiku Northwest. Most of our members focus, in the haiku tradition, on objective sensory imagery that employs a seasonal reference (kigo in Japanese) and a two-part juxtapositional structure (equivalent to a kireji, or cutting word). Because of differences between English and Japanese, we are aware that seventeen syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern in English tends to produce a poem that is longer than a Japanese haiku, and may suffer from padding or chopping to fit a sound pattern works well in Japanese but not in English, despite popular belief (the 5-7-5 syllable pattern for haiku in English may be best understood as an urban myth). Thus we tend to focus on haiku as a one-breath seasonal poem whose two parts create energy through implication. If these traditions are unfamiliar to you, we invite you to come to our meetings to learn as we have learned. Each of us took our turn learning these traditions, and also explored how to develop our own unique voices in the art of haiku. We have also worked to go beyond tradition, to take haiku in new directions that fit our personal muses. For more information about haiku, many useful essays on haiku appear at Graceguts.

Can you recommend some good books to read about haiku?

The standard books for anyone wishing to learn to write haiku in English are William J. Higginson’s The Haiku Handbook (Kodansha, 1989) and Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology (W. W. Norton, 1999, third edition). These books are readily available in libraries and bookstores. Ask any of our members for additional book recommendations. We also recommend subscribing to journals such as Frogpond (which comes with membership in the Haiku Society of America), Modern Haiku, and other haiku journals. To explore an extensive list of haiku-related journals in English, please visit http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/ann-pubs.htm.

I have more questions. Who should I contact for help?