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 | Haiku Holiday at the end of April and then . . . Wednesday June 3 in Chapel Hill
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| 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.
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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!
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.
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.
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Haiku Holiday
This year, we celebrated the 30th annual Haiku Holiday with the North Carolina Haiku Society on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Read all about it on our Archive page.
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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. 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.
Email List & Blog
We post haiku-related news items on the NCHS blog.
We have a low-traffic NCHS email list that we use for meeting announcements. This is a one-way list: only the webmaster can post messages. If you would like to be on the NCHS email list, see the Contact Us page.