North Carolina Haiku Society

Meetings & Events

At Regency Park.
Photo by Dave Russo.

Monthly Meetings

The North Carolina Haiku Society holds monthly meetings on the first Wednesday of each month unless another date is announced. The meetings are open to anyone with an interest in haiku, beginner or advanced.

The main event of most meetings will be a workshop in that we discuss haiku that we have written. As you might guess from our web site, the focus of the meetings will be on literary haiku rather than "joke haiku" about spam, computer error messages, and the like. Please see Meeting Format below for details.

Date of Next Meeting

Wednesday July 7 in Chapel Hill

Time

7:30 PM

City or Town

Newcomers are welcome! Details about the location of the meeting will be sent to our email list. If you are not on the list, contact us and ask for directions. See our Contact Us page.

Meeting Format:

In general, we'll begin by giving people a chance to ask questions or make comments. Someone might give a brief presentation about haiku or related forms. Then we will move on to the main event: a workshop in that we discuss haiku that we have written.

If you are a free spirit and just want to come and see what happens, welcome!

If you'd like to know a little more about contemporary haiku in English, you could read the topic What's a haiku?, then read the poems on a well-edited haiku site, such as The Heron's Nest or the Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award Collection on the Haiku Society of America web site.

Hope to see you at the meeting!

Ginkos (haiku walks)

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), one of the "Big Four" of the Japanese haiku masters, thought that haiku poets should practice shasei—"sketching from life"—in order to develop their powers of observation and description. A traditional way to develop these skills is to participate in a ginko, a haiku walk.

NCHS ginkos tend to be informal and democratic. We gather at a location, usually a scenic or historic place, and walk about. We jot down notes about what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste—as well as thoughts and feelings that arise. After the walk, we turn our notes into haiku and read some of them aloud to the rest of the group. The goal is not to "impress" but to respond to what is around us.

Again: if you are a free spirit and just want to come and see what happens, welcome!

About the 5-7-5 syllable count: For the purpose of our ginko, please feel free to keep the familiar 5-7-5 syllable count or adopt the freer form that is typically published in literary journals that focus on haiku written in English, such as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron's Nest, and others. Since the early years of the 20th century, many poets in Japan and elsewhere have de-emphasized the 5-7-5 pattern in order to focus on other elements of haiku form and tradition. Other poets have broken with tradition in order to seek new possibilities in haiku. For details, see What's a haiku?

Date of Next NCHS Ginko

To be announced.

Time

To be announced.

Place

To be announced.

Details will be sent to our email list and will also be published in local newspapers. If you are not on the list, you can contact us and ask for directions. See our Contact Us page.

Overview

Come celebrate the 31st annual Haiku Holiday with the North Carolina Haiku Society on Saturday, April 24, 2010. Experienced haiku teachers and poets will conduct workshops, talks and walks. The event is open to anyone with an interest in haiku, beginner or advanced.

Our first Haiku Holiday took place at Bolin Brook Farm near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the United States of America on January 26, 1980. Since then, all of our annual meetings have been held at Bolin Brook Farm—thanks to our gracious host and member since the beginning, Jean Earnhardt. Our Galleries section has a few pictures from past Haiku Holidays.

If you are going to participate in a workshop, bring previously written, unpublished haiku—or you can dash one off after the ginko (haiku walk). Membership in the North Carolina Haiku Society is encouraged but not required. There is no membership or registration fee, but small donations will be gratefully accepted at the workshop.

Please:

Bring a bag lunch.
Check the weather and dress accordingly. Haiku Holiday is held rain or shine.
Bring some of your favorite haiku (wriiten by someone else) that you might be willing to share with the group.

Contact

The main contact for this meeting is Dave Russo. See the Contact Us page for my contact information. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about the meeting.

Presenters

Roberta Beary’s book of haiku, The Unworn Necklace (Snapshot Press, 2007), selected as a William Carlos Williams Book Award finalist (Poetry Society of America), was named a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award prize winner. She serves as an associate of The Haiku Foundation and as an editor of the Red Moon Anthology haiku series. In 2009, Roberta Beary and Lenard D. Moore presented Navigating Crosscurrents in the Craft of Haiku: Anonymous Haiku Writing Workshop to critical acclaim at Haiku North America Ottawa. Roberta Beary has won numerous awards for her haiku, including the Kusamakura Haiku Contest's Grand Prize of a trip to Japan in 2005. Her haibun also have been honored; two haibun received Modern Haiku's Favorite Haibun Award and two others were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can read more of her work at www.robertabeary.com.

Roberta will read from her most recent chapbook, nothing left to say, poems of sound and silence, edited by Michael Dylan Welch. This book is available from Kings Road Press at www.kingsroadpress.com, but I suggest that you contact the publisher at kingsroadpress_at_hotmail_dot_com. Roberta will present a haibun writing workshop with examples of haibun, written by herself and others, that in William Faulkner's words show,"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." Participants are encouraged to bring a favorite haibun to share. There will also be a lively discussion of the role of haiku in haibun. (Haibun is the combination of prose and haiku, an art form which emerged in Midieval Japan. See the Haiku Society of America's definition of haibun. See also Contemporary Haibun Online.)

Lenard D. Moore, the Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society, was Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for Eastern North Carolina from 2007 to 2009. He is a past President of the Haiku Society of America: the first Southerner and the first African American to be elected as President of the HSA. Lenard is the founder of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective (CAAWC). His latest collection of poems is A Temple Looming (WordTech Editions: 2008). Lenard will give some opening remarks and will describe his recent trip to Japan as president of the Haiku Society of America.

Robert Moyer lives in Winston-Salem, NC, where he was local host for Haiku North America 2007. He has had work published in a number of journals, such as frogpond, Modern Haiku, bottle rockets, and Sketchbook. He has been included in a number of anthologies, most recently the ten-year Acorn anthology. An article about his teaching haiku to elementary school children, "Looking for the Moment: Haiku, Theater and Play," was featured in the March 2009 Haiku Society of America Newsletter. The article arose from a project conducted at the Arts-Based Elementary School, in which grades 2-5 will write haiku to be commented upon by NCHS members and then collected into a book. Students read selected poems from this project at the December 2008 Haiku Society of America meeting in Winston-Salem. Bob will lead Write Before Your Eyes: an experience in haiku composition.

Dave Russo organizes the monthly meetings of the North Carolina Haiku Society. His haiku have appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Acorn, and other journals. He is included in the latest New Resonance anthology from Red Moon Press. Russo is the web administrator for the North Carolina Haiku Society, The Haiku Foundation, the NCHS, and Red Moon Press. He will lead one of haiku workshops in the afternoon.

Our Host

Jean Earnhardt retired in 1995 after 20 years as a hospital PR/marketing director. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Carolina in 1952 and a Masters in Liberal Studies from Duke forty years later. While raising two sons she sold freelance features and photographs to newspapers and tried her hand at short stories and poetry. She lives on an old farmstead which has been in Jean's family for 12 generations. Bolin Brook has hosted the Haiku Holiday since its inception in 1980.

Directions to Bolin Brook Farm

Bolin Brook Farm is a beautiful place, but you may need a little help in finding it. Here is Jean's address and contact information:

Jean Earnhardt
600 Bolin Brook Farm Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-929-4884
jjearn@bellsouth.net

Click this link to see a Google Map.

Click this link to see a photo of the sign you'll see on the side of the road: Photos from Haiku Holiday 2002.

Schedule for Haiku Holiday on Saturday April 24, 2010

Updated: April 21, 2010

All schedules are tentative, of course, due to weather, whims, and twists of fate. We might have showers, so please check the weather and dress accordingly.

8:45: 9:25 AM	Registration, coffee, tea and pastry
9:30 to 10:00	Opening remarks by Jean Earnhardt and Lenard D. Moore. Lenard will talk about his recent trip to Japan, as president of the Haiku Society of America.
10:00 to 10:30	Write Before Your Eyes: an experience in haiku composition led by Bob Moyer.
10:30 to 12 noon	Self-guided ginko (haiku walk) and Other Activities. Weather permitting, some of us will follow the usual trail for the ginko as we have done in the past. Visit our book display, featuring Rosenberry Books. Take the opportunity to talk with NCHS members about haiku.
12 noon to 1:00	Lunch Please bring a bag lunch. Drinks will be provided.
1:05 to 1:25	Reading by Roberta Beary Roberta will read from her most recent chapbook, nothing left to say, and perhaps other work.
1:25 to 3:30	Workshops You can workshop a haiku or a haibun that you wrote today, or you can bring previously-written work to discuss. Haibun workshop led by Roberta Beary. Haiku workshop led by Dave Russo. This will be similar to our monthly workshop. In addition to your own work, please bring some of your favorite haiku written by someone else to share with the group.
Around 3:30	Meeting adjourns

Email List & Facebook Fan Page

We have a low-traffic NCHS email list that we use for meeting announcements and haiku news. This is a one-way list: only the webmaster can post messages. If you would like to join the list, use our NCHS Email List Sign-Up Form.

We have a Facebook fan page as well.

See also Curtis Dunlap's blog, Blogging Along Tobacco Road. Curtis is an NCHS member.