Snapshots from Haiku North America 2023

Downtown Cincinnati at night, looking toward the Roebling Bridge from the 28th floor of the conference hotel.

Cincinnati Poet Laureate Yalie Saweda Kamara welcomed HNA attendees to the conference. I became a big fan of Yalie when I read her wonderful poem "Besaydoo" to my poetry-reading group in Raleigh. Be sure to search for this poem and Yalie's book of the same name (milkweed.org/book/besaydoo).

NCHS member Crystal Simone Smith gives a presentation about her haiku based on runaway slave ads. Some of these haiku were part of Songs in Flight, a multilayered collaboration with leading Black American poets, composers, and performers. Songs in Flight opened on Thursday, January 12, 2023, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Slide from Michael Dylan Welch's latest presentation on deja-ku. See also his Deja-Ku Diary (dejakudiary.wordpress.com). Michael helped to found the Haiku North America conference in 1991. He pops up everywhere there is haiku in North America.

Cincinnati native Buck Neihoff and Ohio refugee Bob Moyer led a ginko in the city. One of the highlights was Carol Ann's Carousel near the Roebling Bridge. Each beast on the carousel has some connection with Cincinnati.

John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky. This bridge was the model for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Reward at the end of the ginko.

Nicky Gutierrez (above) and Dan Schwerin gave a presentation called Examining Stance in Haiku, based in part on Kaneko Tohta's idea of stance or attitude towards self and social issues. Also based on Dan's recent essay in the U.K. journal, Presence: Haiku and Christian Practice. Two slides from that presentation follow. Nicky facilitates the Ohaio-ku Study Group. This fall he'll begin studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.

Dan's slide from Examining Stance in Haiku. Dan is the Bishop of the Northern Illinois Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Dan's slide from Examining Stance in Haiku.

This haiku by NCHS member Matt Snyder will be part of the new Haiku Trail at Hueston Woods State Park, near Cincinnati. A donation by Patti Niehoff made this trail possible.