Five Questions for a First-Grade Teacher: Jayme Copeland

This iteration of Five Questions comes with an appeal from an educator in my hometown, Terre Haute, IN.  High Coup Journal publishes the tiniest of poems, so we're also committed to helping out the tiniest of students.  Thus we encourage you to donate to first-grade teacher Jayme Copeland's DonorsChoose project to supply her classroom with important literacy materials in a high-poverty school district.  Anyway, let's see what she has to say...




1. They say that "everything I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarten."  Why, then, do you teach first grade?

Teaching first grade is amazing, and I love every minute of it. I feel like I am laying the foundation for everything they are going to learn from this point on. I love seeing the looks on my students faces when they read for the first time-- there is nothing like it.

2. How much of a difference is the reading level of a kid going into first grade and a kid finishing 1st grade, usually?


At the beginning of the school year, some students come in still not knowing all of their letters and sounds, while some come in reading basic sight words and others reading small chapter books. I try to focus in on what each student needs, so hopefully by the end of the year students are able to know all letters and sounds and are able to read most first grade sight words. Meanwhile, other students are beginning to read books on their own, and for my friends already reading chapter books, we work on fluency and comprehension.

3. Why, then, is your fundraising project so important?

In these tough economic times, budgets are being cut and we don’t have money for extra supplies. One item I have on my list is a Toobaloo. Toobaloos look like a phone, and students read into them and can hear themselves read. This makes it easier for them to self-correct, which in turn will help them become more fluent readers. To purchase a set of these on my own would be very expensive.

I also have supplies listed that will help my students become better writers. They have such great stories, but until they can read and write they cannot express themselves on paper. I spend a lot of money on simple supplies for my students-- that it makes it difficult to purchase bigger items. DonorsChoose.org gives me the opportunity to put my wish list up and then generous donors help my wish list become a reality. My students and I are very grateful for the donations we receive from DonorsChoose!

4. A lot of picture books are written in poetic form.  Do you have any favorite picture books you use with your students?

I have two favorite books that I love sharing with my students every year. The Polar Express, written by Chris Van Allsburg, and Where the Wild Things Are, written by Maurice Sendak. Both books really bring out the kid in me, and for my students they let their imaginations soar.

5. Do you think you might get your kids to write a few haiku?  It's just 5/7/5 syllables... maybe there's a budding poet in the room!

My students have a poetry center that they go to each week, and we practice poetry a lot. I have never tried haiku with my students, but I think with a little guidance and a lot of practice they would be able to write a haiku... or at least give it a good shot!




JAYME COPELAND graduated from Indiana State University with a B.S. in Elementary Education. She has been teaching for seven years and has been teaching first grade for the last four years.  She enjoys the opportunity to mentor future teachers from Indiana State University and also enjoys being involved with Student Council.  She and her students love Friday afternoons because they are able to show off their creative side by singing, dancing, or sharing their artwork.

Five Questions for a Folk Hero: Eli Van Sickel

We'd like to start off Volume Two's series of community interviews by interviewing a man who straddles the line between fact and fiction, anonymity and pure legend.  He's Eli Van Sickel, and he's one of the great heroes of the Terre Haute, Indiana, indie folk scene, and he was published in our first issue.  (Yes, Terre Haute, the city that gave to the world Eugene V. Debs and took from the world, by way of the Federal Death Row, Timothy McVeigh.)  Let's see what he has to say...



1. How many songs would you say you've written and performed?

I've written about 20-25 songs since I started playing and writing almost 6 years ago. I've performed most of them live.


2. What are some similarities between playing acoustic guitar and writing haiku?

There is a spirituality about it that people tend to forget. It is very open to interpretation and the player/poet has incredible creative freedom, though the rules of the style have to be meticulously followed.


3. You're about to begin your master's in Theater at Illinois State University.  Are there any types of theater you would associate with haiku? 

Well, Japanese theatre, obviously. I am fascinated/intimidated by Noh plays; it's a very dense, beautiful style of theatre that hasn't changed in centuries. I'm also a huge fan of dramatic/poetic realism, minimalistically staged; that kind of stuff really doesn't hand the audience much on a silver platter, but rather requires them to interpret the work.


4. How will the Legend of Eli Van Sickel read in 20 years?

Hopefully it will say that he is happily married with children, serves as either the artistic director of a non-profit theatre or the chair of a university theatre department, and continues to write and perform music. Also, his books Deaf Theatre In America and The Theatrical Legacy of Clifford Odets are both New York Times Best Sellers. A Tony Award or two would be nice as well.


5. Do you think Terre Haute's diaspora of wayward artists will ever truly be able to come home?

I think Terre Haute is definitely growing as an artists' home. Slowly but surely, it is becoming safer to "let your freak flag fly," as it were, and create. However, many of us (myself included) find that there's only so much that you can do in Terre Haute and so long you can stay here before it's time to take the next step and move on; but I think you'll find that anywhere.



ELI VAN SICKEL is going to send us a bio.  For now, check out his music here.

Looking Forward, Looking Inward: Volume 2

As we prepare to begin our second year of publication, High Coup Journal would like to take a new direction with its "Five Questions" interviews.  For a year we have brought you interviews with haiku-friendly editors and members of a slew of other professions outside our own community, trying to forge connections between this journal and the community at large.

This year, we'd like to try something different: while we'll still be featuring editor interviews from time to time, we're going to make our main focus catching back up with some of our previous authors and seeing what they're doing these days.  We are a community, and we want our community's own voices to be highlighted now.

So be checking your e-mails shortly!  We're going to start assembling a list of people who might like to be interviewed very soon.

Five Questions for a Poet Laureate: Joan Logghe

As part of our continuing coverage of Axle Contemporary's "Haiku Roadsign" display in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we've managed to snag a great interview with the judge of the haiku contest that generated all the poems now found in and around the town.  She's Joan Logghe, and in addition to being the judge of this contest, she's also the Poet Laureate of Santa Fe!  Let's see what she has to say...


1. The city of Santa Fe was founded back in 1610, making it the oldest state capitol in America.  How far back does the post of Poet Laureate go?  Do you still get the traditional "butt of sack" awarded to you?

We just had our big  Santa Fe 400 celebration and I was a poetry judge for the student poets who wrote about Santa Fe.  Their poems were placed in a time capsule.   I am the third Poet Laureate or as I call it PL so it began in 2006.  The term is two years and I was preceded by the amazing Arthur Sze and the fabulous Valerie Martinez.  No "butt of sack" for me, but ample opportunity for drink, a small stipend, and a full dance card.  I have attended more galas and awards dinners than ever in my life.  I think a nice case of wine or at least free parking downtown would be a wonderful addition to the PL life.

2. What sorts of educational activities are you involved in as Poet Laureate?

The educational aspect is one of the considerations in choosing the PL.  I have been in the schools for over 30 years, first as volunteer and then it evolved into various Poet-in-the Schools gigs and in one case, Santa Fe Girls' School, eleven years as a poet-in-residence teaching once a week over three years.  I am dedicated to enriching a culture of poetry in our community.

For this PL term I wanted to show young children how I fell in love with poetry and how much fun it is.  I selected poems from my youth and beyond and with composer and musician, Jeremy Bleich, made a performance piece called "Joan and the Giant Pencil" after James and the Giant Peach.  I used this name because I have been able to borrow a wonderful four foot yellow pencil called "Future" from Kathleen McCloud, a former writing student and awesome artist. The pencil comes to every school or museum or library with us, and I have two great poems about pencils that I found, one by US PL W.S. Merwin (enough initials for you?) and one by a Spanish language poet, Jesus Carlos Soto Morfin.

I move from poems I loved as a child to Frost and Dickinson and Carl Sandberg and my own poems. There are several bilingual poems as often our audiences have native Spanish speakers.  The program is about 50 minutes long and it keeps attention even of very small children.  They love Jeremy and the music, and it is interactive so they get to clap out gallops, or echo words as I read the poems.  Some of the teachers then write with the students, though they are mostly very busy.  We'll be at Santa Fe Children's Museum this July 14th and they are making a poetry festival there.

I have also done things as diverse as teaching poetry in the Community Gallery f the Santa Fe Arts Commission, at a show called "Mining the Unconscious" this past Saturday to speaking and reading at a variety of poetry or community events. Even if it is my upcoming Fourth of July appearance at the Pancake Breakfast on the plaza, I try and lure folks into loving poetry, or remembering they did as a child.


3. How did you get involved with the Axle Contemporary group?

I think I sat down in the Gallery/Van early on beside the Farmer's Market site.  I knew Jerry Welman vaguely, and then it progressed to casually, and finally it is dearly. Matthew I just met on the van.  Both of these men are so visionary and fun to hang out with.  Then they asked me to judge the contest, lured only by my new Poet Laureate outfit.  I had an insane schedule of things I had said "yes" to. I was feeling a slight 'No" welling up in me.

Once we met and talked, I knew it would be fun to work together and I could practice playing well with others (I tend to like being my own boss and co-conspirator). I have been to several of the Axle Contemporary openings, not as many as I would like as I live 25 miles north of town and value down time and taking a no-drive day every week.   But I was bragging about them to everyone in town, even before I got to know them.  i just think the step-van is the coolest idea and fits my art-for-the-people aesthetic, art in daily life ideal.  I am a devotee and a van fan.

4. What challenges do you face when judging a contest?

One reason is I don't like to judge art, though I can be judgmental.  I also have taught so many people and have many beloved students.  I didn't want to have to choose  and make people sad. I have been rejected as much as accepted in poetry. But the judging was anonymous, so that felt right.  And haiku is brief, so that helped.  The guys also did a preliminary read and sorted into two piles, but truthfully, there were ones in the pile they deemed not as strong that I loved, and so they are going to be on the sign.  I am also aware of the total subjectivity of our personal taste.

We have all the schools of poetry in Santa Fe. It is a thriving poetry scene, so we have  a wide range from the abstract language influenced schools to Slam and everything in between.  I can think of other haiku poets in town who deserve the job more than I do... Miriam Sagan, a stunning haiku poet for decades, and Charles Trumbull who edits Modern Haiku and is past president of the Haiku Society of America... plus John Brandi, who is another favorite of mine and has made a lifelong relationship with haiku.  Yet, I am glad I got the job, and we get to publish all of them which makes it a strong and varied group, from beginners to these seasoned haiku poets.

Once I got the poems, my husband and I went out to dinner in an Asian fusion restaurant and I ordered a margarita.  I read quickly through the entire pile and he reviewed them as well. They were on little strips of paper, some almost like large fortunes, and it was as memorable and pleasant a judging experience as I have ever had.   It felt good to do a drive-by reading, and then settle in at home and read carefully the next morning with a sobering cup of black tea.  I had them selected within 24 hours.

5. What are your personal feelings regarding the haiku?  

Do you mean "The haiku" as in all haiku, or the haiku submitted for Haiku Roadsign?  I think we got excellent work and I tried to choose poems that were crisp, imaged,  and respected at least one element of "the Haiku."

I have a large section of haiku books on my shelves and I am an aficionado, but in no ways an expert.  I once gave a friend pages and pages of my haiku and he said I had three true ones.  I have been reading these poets in translation and appreciation since the 60s and so that gives me an ear and a sensibility.  The thing that surprised me when I read the work submitted was how many poets ignored imagery and the natural world.  I felt as if senryu gave too much permission to just talk in abstraction, and missed out on the delicate feeling of a haiku.  I think of haiku is as much about heightening awareness, and hearing the reverberation as about what's on the page.  I think image is the way in, and the difficult turn, twist, or surprise element was rare in our submissions, but I love when it happens.  I also love what my friend Judyth Hill says in a great pantoum from her book Black Hollyhock, First Light:   "There's a secret in haiku, I'll tell you / the fourth line is silent."

Haiku is the form most often taught in schools because teachers see the formula 5/7/5 and mistakenly think it is easy to teach.  It is both subtle and sophisticated, and I was surprised that some of my friends whose poetry I love and adore, didn't have the sensibility of spare attention packed language.

We didn't count syllables, though I love Clark Strand's description of a dying haiku master, on his death bed, counting on his fingers.  I also taught a  ten year old friend who insisted on counting because it was more challenging.  I think selecting the poems we got, choosing 32 of them, was a blast and so much easier that I expected.




JOAN LOGGHE (Santa Fe, NM) is Santa Fe's third poet Laureate, serving from 2010-2012. She began teaching poetry as a volunteer in her childrens' school thirty years ago. She continues to bring poetry into the schools, serving our young people, and has taught everywhere and to all ages, from Santa Fe Community College to Zagreb, Croatia. This year she was the keynote speaker at Santa Fe High graduation. Her most recent books are The Singing Bowl from University of New Mexico Press and Love & Death: Greatest Hits, from Tres Chicas Books with Miriam Sagan and Renée Gregorio.

Five Questions for Two Twitterers: Alison Kehler and Kelly Westhoff of Haiku by Two

Let's get ready for Volume 2 of High Coup Journal!  As you might have guessed from the June cover art, literary coupling will be something of a theme for this issue: many haiku coupled together into a series, such as in Henry Visotski's "The Death of the (Other) American Dream"; a book composed by two individual authors in distinct but unlabeled collaboration, such as in our upcoming book review; or a daily haiku Twitter feed by two friends, Alison Kehler and Kelly Westhoff.  Let's see what the authors of Haiku by Two have to say...

1. So you’re about to hit 900 haiku... that’s like 9 complete hyakuin renga.  Seriously, how do you keep it going?

ALISON:
Working with Kelly is the key. I know that I could not do this by myself. And I feel a sense of ongoing conversation doing this with Kelly, which is very motivating. My mother recently asked me, “How long are you going to continue your haiku project?” And I was all like, “What do you mean? We’re going to do this forever!”

KELLY:
It helps me to have a partner. This way, I’m accountable to someone else. Like a lot of writers, I get my best work done under deadline. For me, Alison is sort of like a deadline. Even if I don’t feel like writing, I know that I have to because I don’t want to let her down.

However, I think the real key for us is that we didn’t take on this project because we wanted to write haiku. We took on this project because we wanted to keep in touch with each other. Even though haiku is our medium, the whole purpose of Haiku By Two is that the poems are an ongoing conversation between two friends. Many of our haiku are deeply personal, and I think the fact that we’re sharing these touching details of our lives with each other is what keeps us going.

2. How do you tend to split up the workload?

ALISON:
When I said I could not do this without Kelly, I meant it. She drives the ship and I do my best to keep up with the division of labor. Sometimes I am behind and she sends me a nice email, like, oh…are you still going to review that book? For me, it works. I like piping in with my own artistic insights, but I’m the sort of creative person who needs another person to keep me focused.

KELLY:
Well, the truth of the matter is that the site is my main mode of procrastination. When I don’t feel like focusing on the other work that I’m supposed to be doing (which happens a lot), I wander over to Haiku By Two and start thinking about ways to update it. Yet I also derive a lot of pleasure from the site, which is probably how it has ended up as my preferred mode of procrastination.

3. So... sometimes the brain just goes blank.  How do you get something to paper (or perhaps to keyboard) in those moments?

ALISON:
We have written many haiku about not knowing what to write about! I think that’s a part of the creative process. There are days in any medium where you feel uninspired and feel you have nothing to add. But I think continuity is the key to any art. So we keep going, we write about “nothing.” Or we suddenly find something when least expected. Or sometimes a haiku is just mediocre. That’s okay, too. It’s part of the process.

KELLY:
Here’s a haiku I posted on the site back in April 2010:

haiku-less, that’s me

I’m all out of fresh ideas

haiku-less, that’s me

I have gone through several dry spells where I feel like all the haiku I post are insipid or trivial or just plain bad. For me, that’s when I really fall back on that standard 5-7-5 syllable count. All I have to do, I tell myself, is come up with the count and then I can be done. And honestly, sometimes that’s the only way to make it through.

4. What effect has your poetic relationship had on your writing, and on your lives? Does it extend beyond the blog?

ALISON:
As the mother of a busy toddler, I rarely talk on the phone. Not even with my mom! I feel like I just don’t have the time or the space to have an extended phone conversation with anyone. So for me, Haiku By Two helps me feel like I have an ongoing conversation with a friend. I keep up with Kelly through the poetry and comments on the blog. I definitely feel close to Kelly because of this project. It has me thinking about her every day. I’ll be driving along and I’ll think “Oh, that reminds me of what Kelly wrote,” or I’ll just be sending her good vibes.

KELLY:
Well...first of all, haiku totally affected my reading choices. We didn’t decide to write haiku because we loved the format. We chose to write haiku because we were drawn to its brevity and straight-forward counting rules. It didn’t take long, though, for haiku to spark my curiosity. Soon after we started Haiku By Two, I was scouring the library for books that would explain the form.

Those reading choices then affected my writing as I started to look for ways to build in a break or reference a season in a less obvious way than saying “winter.”

Now, haiku has become a mode of thinking that I often fall into. For example, as I walk my dogs, I’m always on the lookout for some shift in nature that I can incorporate into haiku.


5. If our readers wanted to start a writing relationship like this, what would be some good pick-up lines?

KELLY:
Well, Alison and I knew each other long before Haiku By Two came about, so neither one of us had to go out and “pick up” a willing blogging partner.

But, if I were to try to set up something like this again, my advice would be that you really need to figure out what your goal is. If your goal is to share information, then you’ll be looking for a blogging partner with a different set of skills than if your goal is to have an ongoing conversation with a friend.

I would also recommend that you have clear posting guidelines. For us, it’s really helpful to know that each one of us has to post one haiku every other day. Having a very clear schedule makes it easy to plan ahead.





ALISON KEHLER writes haiku. She also makes soap. And she paints. And she teaches English to adult students. Plus, she is a mom to a busy toddler and a rambunctious puppy. She gathers ideas from each of her roles in life and incorporates them into her tiny poems.

KELLY WESTHOFF writes haiku when she should be doing something else. Like writing an article for her freelance career or grading papers for the college English classes she teaches. She finds inspiration for her haiku every time she takes her dogs for a walk.

Five Questions for a Photographer: Ann Wright

If you've been reading High Coup Journal for any length of time, you may have noticed that little photo credit to Ann Wright.  Hopefully you've taken a little time to browse her extensive gallery of photography.  What you may not know is that she has also been featured in CNN's iReport and CuteOverload.com.  Oh, and we have her here today.  Let's see what she has to say...


1. What's your favorite subject for photography?

It may sound a bit cliche, but I love doing nature photos.  Nature cooperates a lot nicer than human elements for one, but there's so much that we pass by day to day, that we don't notice.  I try to bring that to the forefront.  You may not notice that tiny purple flower growing out of the crack in the sidewalk, but I do.  More recently, snow is playing a huge part in my creativity.  Capturing individual snowflakes, a dusting of snow on a branch, it's really the little things in life that matter the most.


2. Haiku in a way is like a snapshot composed in words.  How do you compare photography to poetry?

Photography and poetry are so similar!  Each tell a story from the point of view from the artist.

With poetry or 

haiku, we are free to be

individuals.

No matter what form of writing you prefer (haiku, iambic pentameter, freestyle, etc), you get to see the world from someone else's point of view.  You feel what they feel.  Photography is no different.  I focus on things that not everyone can really "see" day to day, I want people to see what I see, to feel what I feel.


3. You've been published on CNN's iReport and have a gallery on deviantArt.  What's the difference between exhibition and publication?

For me, exhibition is almost a first step.  You put yourself out there, get feedback, the world is your critic.  With publication, you've been chosen.  Someone, somewhere appreciates what you've done and has decided to help show the world what you see.  Either one is very flattering, but being published is so much more fun!


4. How do you differentiate between "artful" photography and the kind of stuff that just ends up in the family photo album?

Family Photo Albums... For people who scrapbook or do the family album thing, those photos are there to capture a moment, a memory in an instant and bring you back to that place.  They're kind of like an external filing system for your brain.  Take a picture really quick so you can remember what happened.  "Art" photography can be similar-- to capture a moment or a memory, but art photography captures the emotion that was attached to the event.  Take for instance the famous V-J Day photo taken in Times Square of the sailor kissing a nurse.  My father was 4 years old when that photo was taken, my mother not even born yet.  Those people are of no relation to me, yet I can feel the sense of elation, joy, of utter celebration in the photo.  Compared to that of a simple family album photo, they both may still be meaningful, but have very different empathetic emotions attached to them.


5. How do you decide on the exact moment to snap the shutter?

Timing is everything!  You have to know the machine you're working with-- how fast the shutter clicks in every kind of light and the estimated speed of the subject your photographing.  I recently attended a scrimmage of the South Bend Roller Girls, South Bend, Indiana's local roller derby team, where my timing was truly tested.  Some are hits, some are misses, and sometimes you're just plain lucky!




ANN WRIGHT, formerly of Whitehall, Ohio, currently resides in Plymouth, Indiana uses a Nikon P90 Digital Camera.  Featured on CNN iReport, CuteOverload.com, and published in the 2010 and 2011 Cute Overload Calendars along with High Coup Magazine.  Online galleries can be found on Deviant Art and on Facebook.

Five Questions for a Scientist: John Cho

This month's "Five Questions" is with MIT Lincoln Laboratory scientist and SPAM Haiku Archive Master Emeritus (SHAME) John Cho.  The Archive is no longer accepting submissions, but it's certainly worth browsing or checking out the printed book, SPAM-ku.  Let's see what he has to say (now, in haiku form)!



1. Did the SPAM-ku phenomenon originate with you, or were these poems already floating around the Internet before you got involved?

Forwarded e-mail

Anonymous SPAM haiku

Origin unknown

2. What finally forced the SPAM-ku archive to close its doors to new submissions?

Job, marriage, children

Spring, summer, autumn, winter

Job, marriage, kids, cat

3. Could you explain for us-- preferably in 17 syllables-- what anisotropic scaling turbulence is?  What relation does it have to wind shear?

Gravity-flattened

Big whorls have small whorls that lead

To a viscous grave*

4. Where do contrails come from?

Jets spew wet vapor

Condensation nuclei

Blue-sky Etch A Sketch

5. How does a knowledge of poetry influence a scientist (and vis versa)?

Poems have spanking

Signal-to-noise ratios

When tuned to the truth

* Apologies to Lewis F. Richardson




JOHN CHO supplied his bio in haiku form as well:

JFK shot down

JNC born in Tokyo

Makes Boston his home

You can find his CV at his MIT page here.

Five Questions for a Director: Steven Tsuchida

Rather than give a book review during our SPAM month, we instead bring you an interview with Steven Tsuchida, director of the fabulous (in every sense of the word) 2004 short film Spam-ku: I Won a Haiku Contest about SPAM.  We here at High Coup Journal consider this film to not only be beautiful but also to represent just about everything we stand for.  Anyway, to the interview!  Here we go...

1. The final scene in your 2004 short film is both humorous and really pretty frickin' eerie.  What inspired it?

I would think no one could prepare for turning into a block of Spam.  So there wasn't any direct inspiration. However, I grew up in Hawaii where SPAM consumption is the highest per capita in the United States. I myself have consumed an embarrassing amount of SPAM in my lifetime. It's quite common. It's even served in all of the McDonald's in town - as well as similar fine dining establishments.  It's only when I came to the continental United States where I learned of the irony/sarcasm/humor of SPAM. I thought everyone ate SPAM.  And, as far as turning into SPAM? Well, you know what they say... you are what we eat.

2. As a director, is it easier or harder to coach actors towards behaving in a sincerely awkward fashion?

Life is just as, or even more awkward, then the cinema. An actor simply needs to refer to their own lives and the awkwardness comes out. Even the coolest kid in school looks in the mirror and sees a little bit of geek reflected back. We are all awkward animals, so it's not a far stretch to act awkward.

The difficult part is being sincere. Meaning, the awkwardness needs to feel real and not an act. Awkwardness is intended for the viewer to feel sympathy to the actor. But if the audience feels like it is an act, the awkwardness is insulting, and you lose the sympathy vote for the actor. Sincerity is the key to acting.


3. (Total fanboy question, sorry): You got to work with Sarah Silverman a few times-- how was that???

It doesn't get better. No scratch that. If she ate Spam, it would be better.

4. But back to your work, what're you up to these days?

I'm prepping a webisode starring Rick Fox.
That's right. RICK FOX!
Trust me. Hilarity will ensue.

5. Haiku is about the shortest form of poetry out there.  Do you see any overlaps between haiku and short film?

Absolutely. The beauty of a haiku is that it maximizes an economy of words that will resonates far beyond it's tiny stature. What I love about an effective haiku is the "aha" effect that it instills. A great haiku illuminates a truth, connecting to the viewer on both a universal level and a personal level. There is a clarity to the words that sheds light on the human condition. Like a haiku, the best shorts work because of there simplicity in the idea and clarity in storytelling.



STEVEN TSUCHIDA loves SPAM.

Five Questions for a Rolling Art Gallery: Axle Contemporary

We've got a super secret bonus interview this month with some more folks doing a Kickstarter.com project.  They're Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman of Santa Fe, NM, and they are the brains behind Axle Contemporary, an art gallery on wheels.

The gallery embodies aspects of sculpture, installation, and performance art, all in the guise of a commercial art gallery.  Anyway, their Kickstarter project involves buying this old sign...

...and displaying a different haiku on each side of it every week for sixteen weeks this summer.  Basically, there are two kinds of people reading now: those who think this is the coolest thing they've ever seen, and those who are lying.  Let's see what the guys have to say... but first, help 'em out!  They've got about $1600 to go on the project in the next 37 days, and you could be the one to put them over the top.


1. How did a 1970 aluminum stepvan go from delivering Twinkies to delivering art to the people?  (As a side-question, how do the people now get their Twinkies?)

The van has been around for over 40 years, and we can't tell exactly where it has been all that time.  We do know that it was owned by a former Secret Service agent and Colorado Springs' foremost Elvis impersonator in the 1980s.  We bought it last year from a guy named Chris, a stepvan aficionado in cutoff military fatigues.   The idea of a mobile art gallery sprung out of our minds before we had a chance to censor it, a whim as much as a serious idea.  Then somehow we bought the vehicle (so big, so shiny) and built the thing.  As for where to purchase a Twinkie, well, not at Whole Foods.


2. The whole operation has a very gonzo/"Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" feeling to it.  Any inspiration there?

The two of us grew up in different places and times that both intersected the road traveled by Furthur.  We were not directly inspired by The Merry Pranksters in this project, but did look extensively at the Hippie School Bus Conversion as a model for vehicular renovation. We also looked at Haitian Tap Taps and ornate Central American buses. There was something about the shiny minimal old/new look of the van that seemed to emit a difficult to locate timeless glow.  We haven't had anyone juggling sledgehammers in the gallery yet, but we are certainly open to the possibility.


3. So are you guys on the bus or off the bus?  (Or maybe the van, in this case.)

We are always on the bus, not on the wagon yet, and most often in the van.


4. What're you doing with the sign after the haiku exhibition is over?

In our "Kickstarter" fundraising campaign we have offered it to the first person who pledges a donation of $1,200.  (There are more affordable pledge levels there too).  Otherwise, we'll use it for a future project or just have it out in the backyard for a while to enjoy the visual feast it offers.


5. How do you feel your taking the art to the people is different than taking the people to the art, like in a traditional gallery?

With our wheels and axles we have access to a much more diverse audience.  Many people are too busy, too lazy, too intimidated, or too uninterested to breach the threshold of an art gallery or museum, or to open a book of poetry.  By bringing the arts to the street we can use our gallery as a vehicle for creative engagement in the social sphere.  We've become a driving force in the arts in Santa Fe, and seeing art in our van or poetry from your car always promises to be a moving experience.  We want to playfully break down boundaries around people and art.  The people can become inspired, engage their innate creativity, and become works of art themselves.




MATTHEW CHASE-DANIEL (né Chase) left New York City in 1970 for the Berkshire Mountains where he raised tadpoles, minnows, and a raccoon, learned to fall off a horse, and hunt morels, wild violets, and rainbow trout. In the early 1980s he made his way to the Ojai Foundation where he spent a year studying Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Lakota Sweat Lodge ritual, and Northwest Coast carving, while growing his hair into ragged dreadlocks, eating macrobiotic food, and wearing bedsheets in the style of a South Indian ascetic monk. Later in the decade, Chase-Daniel studied at Sarah Lawrence College (B.A.) and in Paris, France, where he studied cultural anthropology, photography, and ethnographic film production (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Sorbonne). Since 1989, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, renovating old houses, growing green chard, and making family and art.  His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the U.S. and in Europe and Japan.  He has created public art projects in New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Italy, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  His photography is represented by Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, California.  He is the co-founder, co-owner, and co-curator of Axle Contemporary.


JERRY WELLMAN grew up near the Menominee reservation in frigid north-central Wisconsin. He left a not so promising job with a traveling carnival to go to school in California eventually graduating from CALARTS with an MFA. He works in many arts media.  His documentary film Fairy Tracks, in search of the spirit in nature, played in film festivals throughout the world.  His paintings have been seen in many museums and gallery exhibitions. He has also published several books including Shadows and What to do with a Dead Pinon.  Along the way, pursuing his life as an artist, Wellman became a firefighter in the Yukon Territory, a woodsman in Alaska,  an ordained minister, an indian trader (one who represents American Indian arts and crafts), a ceramic tile manufacturer, a teacher, a husband and father, and lately co-founder, co-owner, and co-curator of a mobile art gallery; Axle Contemporary.  For Wellman, it's all art, or else art fodder.

Five Questions for an Chairperson: Jim Kacian

Our interview this month is with Haiku Foundation Chairperson, Red Moon Press founder, and former Frogpond editor Jim Kacian.  The Foundation, by the way, will shortly be wrapping up its HaikuNow! contest.  You've got until March 31 to submit your haiku, and there's a cash prize!  Seriously.  Don't skip this.  Anyway, let's see what he has to say...


1. Okay, back in December we asked current Frogpond editor George Swede what his favorite version of Matsuo Basho's frog poem was.  As a former Frogpond editor yourself, what's yours?

As I'm sure you're aware, nearly everyone who has ever had a bit of Japanese has tried his/her hand at this poem. One of my favorite books of all time is Hiro Sato's One Hundred Frogs, which recorded most of the attempts up to the time of its publication. I'm not sure I can say definitively that I have a favorite version, but a couple versions that amuse me include Curtis Hidden Page's

A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps . . .

   Apart, unstirred by sound or motion . . . till

Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps.

The audacity of such verbosity suggests a very great confidence, which, given the clarity that hindsight presents, was badly misplaced. Most of the other versions hinge on whether to "splash" or not, and I don't find myself that much in need of onomatapoeia to favor those versions. So I find it hard to better Bill Higginson's

Old pond . . .

  a frog leaps in

    water's sound.

I find this the most liquid rendering, especially how the frog's leap can be intuited to be headed into the sound as well as the water in this version.

Also fun in Sato's book are the many one-offs inspired by the hoary old classic, sonnets and short stories and what-all. And of course I had to try my own, year's ago:

old pond . . .

on it's banks, Basho—

the sound of his water

Probably we shouldn't linger on this . . .


2. How does The Haiku Foundation relate to the Haiku Society of America?  Is it like an East Coast/West Coast thang?

The Haiku Foundation has no formal relationship with the Haiku Society of America, other than wishing it well. We have completely different missions and goals and structures, and there is very little overlap in what we offer.

HSA is a membership organization primarily based around subscription to its journal, Frogpond, and is more a social organization. It's mission can be found on its website.

The mission of The Haiku Foundation is to archive the first century of achievement in English-language haiku, and to create opportunities for our second. To these ends, we are creating structures that will accomplish these goals—a hard-copy library, an online library, a bibliography—and others that will acquaint more people with the history of ELH—a timeline (in process), volumes such as Montage: The Book, and the Haiku Database (a project founded and implemented by Charles Trumbull which we hope in time to incorporate in toto on the THF website). We are a project-oriented organization, and have no membership, no dues, and no regular membership benefits per se: what we produce we make available to all, generally online. And like any nonprofit corporation, we are dependent for our funding on like-minded readers, writers and aficionados. We don't produce a journal or hold public elections.


3. The Haiku Foundation is fairly new-- what went into putting it together?

Our charter date is January 6, and we've just passed our second anniversary, but of course this is just our public face. We've been in process since 2005. The specific impetus for the creation of the Foundation was a casual comment from the Kiwi poet Ernest Berry, who wished he was able to find the winning poems from all the previous Henderson and Brady and Spiess and other contests in a single place. He thought another venture of mine, Red Moon Press, might be interested in creating a volume that collected them. That didn't seem like a feasible project for RMP to me, but it did trigger many other thoughts. Ernie will be pleased to see that we have just placed a version of his idea on the Foundation site, largely implemented by Paul Miller. This is precisely how the Foundation works: people identify projects that need doing, and the Foundation tries to help those people realize their visions.

I followed up this initial conception with conversations with many poets, to get a variety of opinions as to what might be seen to be necessary from haiku's perspective. I was not concerned so much with what best served poets, since HSA and other organizations already existed, so the goal was to serve haiku itself, expecting that poets would be served along the way. This enquiry proceeded largely as a thought experiment until Dave Russo, one of the implementers of Haiku North America in 2007, indicated his interest once that event was concluded. Dave's expertise as a web designer and implementer is seminal not only to the success of the Foundation, but to its very presence. Virtually every aspect of the Foundation that is accessible to others has Dave's fingerprints on it, and we simply couldn't have realized our goals without his involvement. Dave serves not only as the Webmaster of the Foundation but is also on the Board of Directors, as is Tom Borkowski, whose involvement was critical to our achieving nonprofit status in our first attempt, and who serves as a Board member as well as Treasurer of the organization. Billie Wilson joined us very shortly after Tom as Secretary to the Foundation, and is responsible for keeping us orderly and connected and moving in a forward direction, which she manages seemingly effortlessly. I fill the other officer position as President and also serve on the Board.


4. Total non-sequitur: your poetry has been translated into several languages.  We often talk about the difficulty translating haiku from Japanese to English; do the same risks exist when translating haiku out of English and into another language, or does the separation from "the mother tongue" make this not as big a deal?

Translation is problematic for everyone, and it is amusing and irritating to see what sort of bollocks can be made of poems no matter the direction one travels. Certainly my own poems have lost nuance (and in some cases, basic content) in their migrations to other languages and cultures. It's a perennial problem and I can't say that my own efforts have solved any of the problems all translators face.

That said, one of the most fecund sources of inspiration is what Richard Gilbert has termed "creative misinterpretation." Certainly the notion of what haiku is has been illumined by just such misinterpretation—in fact, our whole notion of what Japan was at the time haiku was coming to the West now seems quaint and patronizing, and I suspect our notion of what haiku is, seen a hundred years from now, will seem the same. But in the quest to meet other conceptions of the real and the beautiful and the poetic we are stimulated as much by what we can't contextualize as by what we can, and this expands the range of what's possible. I hope that whatever people in Bulgaria and Egypt and Taiwan are making of my poems, that they at least are finding something that nourishes their own creative spark, and that they are enlarged by the conversation.


5. Where would you like to see The Haiku Foundation in ten years?

Our focus, as a start-up organization, has been on our short term vision and goals, and to this end we have the various things you'll find on the website: forums and a blog and various content areas that are designed to invite participation. But of course this is only part of what we hope to achieve. We have specific long-term goals that we are working towards simultaneously with these more obvious ones, though the time frame may not in truth be ten years.

In keeping with our mission to archive our first century of achievement in ELH, we are working towards creating a hard-copy library of every book ever produced in the genre. This is a daunting challenge, of course, but more because of the explosion of haiku publishing that is taking place. What has been produced in the past is static, and either some volumes are available or they aren't, and we keep looking. But keeping up with current output is challenging, not only for sheer numbers but for the many unexpected places one needs to look to find all such offerings.

And of course, having assembled such a library, we would like a place to house it. We are exploring opportunities of linking with an institution that would be capable of maintaining such a library, which might be a university or artist colony or other such facility that would value our work. There is also the option of creating or purchasing our own building, which would require capital funding that we have not approached to this point. And in any of these venues we envision a Haiku Hall of Fame, where our outstanding poets might have a place where their achievements might be viewed in a sympathetic context. Likely these would all be in the same location.

Parallel to our hard-copy library is our online library, where haiku books would be made available to scholars, students, poets and interested persons without the difficulties of tracking them down, especially useful for rare or out of print books. We also look forward to a day when we host a variety of gatherings, from conferences to readings to potluck suppers where poets can gather and share their work and their lives. We would like to offer scholarships and incentives to poets as well, which might be implemented at any of these venues.

We have only begun to envision what the Foundation will have to offer in years to come. I'm sure other energies and visions will help expand this earliest imagining. However, the long-range goal of creating new opportunities that serve haiku will remain, I am certain, central to all such visions.

Thank you for your interest in the Foundation and for the opportunity to tell your readers a bit about what we're doing, and hope to do, at THF. I hope they will all feel free to explore the site and bring their energy and interest to bear on the future of haiku. As Harold Henderson wrote, "Haiku will be what poets make of it." We are happy to be doing our part to see that this rings true.





JIM KACIAN is Founder and President of The Haiku Foundation, founder of Red Moon Press (the largest press dedicated to haiku in the world—which makes it a very small enterprise), author of 15 award-winning books and thousands of haiku, some of which have been translated into more than fifty languages. You can learn more about him if you're interested by checking out his bio on Wikipedia.

Five Questions for an Editor: Taylor Lampton

Our first interview of March is with The Scarlet Sound's Taylor Lampton.  Her publication began as a New Brunswick, New Jersey, adaptation of the Santiago en Cien Palabras project and has grown into an e-journal.   Let's see what she has to say...

1. The Scarlet Sound, huh? Tell us that's closer to a "blue note" than it is "the brown note."

Well the sound in question certainly does not cause any involuntary movements other than a smile here and there. The Scarlet Sound is defined as the sum of individual heartbeats coming together as one through artistic community. Rather than a specific kind of "note" I would argue in favor of a "beautiful cacophony." Like any great symphony, this sound brings seemingly unrelated, clashing sounds and rhythms together creating one sound -- a sound of beauty. The opportunity for those sounds to combine and become a cohesive unit leads to the beauty. The Scarlet Sound is both the name of the sound we look for, the summation of those heartbeats, and it is the opportunity for those heartbeats to come together.


2. Your journal publishes poetry, short fiction, humor, film, visual art, and photography. That's quite a wide swath of art to choose from. What sort of unifying elements are you looking for?

We tend to look for pieces, no matter the genre, that expose the heart of the artist. It's not about a particular theme. It is about expression and recognition. What does that mean in terms of what you'll see on our pages? It means that you'll find the work of real people and not those people who write flowery words for the sake of self-worship or the "artistic" photographs that make no sense to someone who hasn't "gotten it" from extensive study of "the field." Our artists are recognized by showcasing their heartbeats, and we hope that our artists can then appreciate hearing from all the different kinds of artists we have in our community.


3. Could you explain a bit more about the South American movement that you mention you're trying to connect to in the publication?

Sure thing! There are a few examples, but I'll explain Santiago en Cien Palabras (Santiago in 100 Words). The goal was to have the people of Santiago, Chile write 100 words or less about the town, their thoughts, stories, whatever. These pieces were then compiled into these booklets that were free reading material for the public transportation system in the city. A person could pick one up and read it while on the metro and then drop it off at their stop or take it home for a bit. It was a hit! The experience let the people of the city provide art for other people in the city, bolstering an appreciation of the arts and providing a community identity.

The Scarlet Sound originally got its start at Rutgers University, which happens to have the largest transportation system in a University in the States. It just made sense to unite an underground artistic community with the Rutgers ideas of tolerance and recognition. We even had the bus system! Throughout time, The Scarlet Sound has taken on a new face as an entirely online arts publication and is now even open to the general public. We took the idea that art creates community, coupled that with our first home's values, and now we have the publication we have today.


4. Let's shift gears to haiku and linguistics, since we do the former and you do the latter. Why isn't syllable-counting in English the same thing as syllable-counting in Japanese?

Well without boring your readers with some intense linguistics, I can say that some languages permit some things to happen while others don't. For instance, in English we can say words that start with the sounds "st" like in "stop sign." Spanish, however, does not allow that and you'll find native Spanish speaker's accents include sayings like "estop sign" to take care of that. This same kind of rule applies to Japanese. It doesn't allow a bunch of consonants to be strung together without having vowels. The word "strength" then is totally not okay in Japanese. Japanese speakers would have to say that as "strengethah." So "strength" is one syllable in English, and at least three in Japanese. Tada! Hope that made sense.


5. You mention a belief that "art can create community." What does "community" mean in the digital age?

Something I absolutely love about the digital age is that community doesn't just mean who lives next to you. It has to do with what you do and what you love. Your community can be as small as a group of close friends and as large as the entire world! The Scarlet Sound's community of artists that have been published have come from all over the United States, which is awesome. Isn't it awesome that we get to choose our community now with how we choose to be involved with technology? I can make friends via twitter in New Zealand or publish an artist in Hong Kong. The globe is a super small place now, and that means community gets to take up more and more geographical space. In the end, I hope our community at The Scarlet Sound can network with their fellow artists and learn how their community works even when spread out all around the world.




TAYLOR LAMPTON is a student and Linguist, though many times those overlap. The Scarlet Sound embodies one of her greatest passions by utilizing creativity and the arts to foster community. Though primarily a scientist and a ridiculously involved undergraduate student, she enjoys writing, photography, and video editing. Taylor is an award-winning public speaker and speech writer and was also recently published in the High Coup Journal.

Five Questions for an Editor: Liam Wilkinson

Our February interview comes to you from jolly Yorkshire, England, with Prune Juice's editor, Liam Wilkinson. Let's see what he has to say...

1. Senryu and kyoka: the evil twins of haiku and tanka?

I like the idea! Senryu and kyoka let us explore ourselves within our environment and, unlike haiku, aren't usually concerned with the natural world. A senryu, depending on its author, might 'happen' in a shopping mall or in an office. The best ones are like magnifying glasses hovering over some strange but universally recognisable aspect of living in this mad, mad world. As a result, many senryu and kyoka are funny and, occasionally, wickedly witty. Jack Kerouac called senryu 'pops' and modernised the idea of writing these very short poems.

2. Does British English differ from American English when writing syllabic poetry? Like, does "colour" have more syllables than "color"? Or... like... if you wanted to write a poem about Nottinghamcestershirestershire-upon-Tyne, would the spoken-length of the word change?

Sorry to disappoint, but modern English senryu and kyoka, and haiku and tanka for that matter, aren't concerned with syllable counting. Some of finest writers of senryu never use the 5-7-5 pattern. This ain't a word game.

3. So are we correct in understanding that the senryu form essentially came from a Mr. Senryu at some point?

Senryu is named after Edo poet Senryū Karai (1718-1790). Senryu was a pen name and translates, literally, as 'river willow.'

4. And the form is well represented by the noble prune because...

A prune, like a senryu, gives one the chance to, erm, get it all out... so to speak!

5. You mention in your journal that both the senryu and the kyoka can be "a vent, a portal, an opening through which we can feed our minds and end up cleansed." So we're doing something more important with these poems than just spouting nonsense and running off at the mouth?

Absolutely. A good senryu/kyoka writer knows how to tap into both the soul of the writer and the reader. A senryu a day keeps the monsters away.

LIAM WILKINSON is a poet and musician from Yorkshire, England. He edits Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu and Kyoka. His blog can be found at http://liamwilkinson.blogspot.com

Five Questions for a Naughty Haikuist

Happy almost Valentine's Day!  In honor of that holiday that a few of us are looking forward to and a lot of us are going to spend drinking vodka straight out of the bottle and watching Bridget Jones's Diary, here's an interview with the author of the Twitter feed Naughty Haiku, the content of which is in no way safe for work but guaranteed to get you twitterpated.  Let's see what she has to say...

naughty haiku tweets

nuggets of poetic form

soiled by dirty words

1. Define "sexy."

'Sexy' is that which ignites the libido, fires the sexual imagination and forges new fantasies in the mind. It's what arouses that playful part of you that yearns to tease and to be teased.  It's subjective and yet contagious; it makes you, and vicariously those around you, feel sexy.

Sunlight in her hair

Summer dress around her feet

Hot under his gaze

2. What makes haiku a sexy form of poetry?

Much of human sexuality, and kink, revolves around the idea of limitation or restriction in some way, be it movement, control, or one or more of the senses.  Picture that special someone (or yourself) blindfolded, or with hands tied.

Mmm.

What?  Oh yes, sorry... by removing a sense like sight you remove the distraction it normally offers, encouraging him or her to focus on the way they feel inside.  By restricting movement, or control, you also remove the burden of responsibility some people subject themselves to, and which blocks them from really feeling.

The haiku is similarly liberating in its restrictive form.  The strict format focuses the author's thoughts onto the image, or sensation, they really want to convey.  Haiku is so brief it offers just a taste, a little juicy, bite-size morsel, of something bigger.  In a few syllables you try to conjure up as sexy, graphic or exciting an image as you can, but then you have no choice but to hand it to the reader to do the rest of the work; to imagine, flesh out and toy with in their mind.  It's the perfect tease.

Sexual power

He pulls forward to kiss me

Restrained by his bonds

3. You were stuck on 666 followers for about two weeks just a little while back... any worries that your Twitter feed had become just a little bit *too* naughty?

I was beginning to take that as a sign, yes.  It seemed that every time I got a new follower, someone else unfollowed as though to keep me at that number.  I was starting to check my follower list for beasts from the book of Revelation.

I know that the subject matter will put some off, since many people are not anonymous on Twitter, and I suspect that adds to the number of people who read the blog I use as an archive, rather than following me directly.  I'm not too worried though.  I know that followers enjoy what I write because they say so, and because it's so easy to unfollow me if they don't.  In truth, Twitter is such a transitory, quick-flowing format, my individually crafted little poems are quickly swept away in the torrent.  To get more followers I'd need to post more frequently but of course, despite the brevity of the form, haiku can be time-consuming to craft.  And the subject matter is really very distracting.  I've managed about one a day for the last year or so, helped by submissions from loved-ones, friends and talented followers, and I've got a head full of ideas for many Naughty Haiku of the future.

And then the book, and then the sit-com.  Or maybe not... Naughty Haiku really *is* a little too naughty for that.

Grabs her from behind

Mistaken identity

Risk of court action

4. How do you demarcate the line between naughty/passionate/sexy and crude/disgusting/creepy?  Any advice for writers?

There's no universal line, and there will always be those who are sensitive or easily offended, especially if you are in sexual territory.  Everyone defines those things differently.  If anything, 'naughty' or 'kinky' is actually what is just on the other side of your reader's line.  I aim to experiment with that line, and surprise people from time to time.  Shocking can be sexy, but so can subtle word-play or an unexpected twist.  I try to keep it playful.

That which is 'crude' can evoke quite different reactions around the dinner table than in the bedroom; something that might be disgusting in one scenario can be very sexy in another.  Context is all, and it's important to set people's expectations.  In the case of Naughty Haiku, 'Naughty' is probably an understatement so I hope my warnings are enough to avoid anyone being truly offended.  And I fret continually about the time I publish them since the time considered 'after the watershed' (eg when television channels permit swearing) depends on the timezones.  But the joy of Twitter, and Haiku, is that posts are so brief that if you don't like one it's quickly forgotten.  I try to write from many different perspectives, and with many fantasies in mind, so there will hopefully be something to whet almost every appetite, amongst other things.

Having said all that, one of the most important skills a writer can learn is to trust themselves and just write; writing about what turns them on. Write for your target audience, and never forget that your target audience is you.

In the restaurant

she leans over, whispers filth

he asks for the check

5. What's the most important thing for people to remember this Valentine's Day?

Valentine's Day isn't about the package offered by the local restaurant or corporate attraction, but about reminding someone special what they mean to you.  Sometimes it's about reminding yourself how special you are.  That means identifying what makes you and your partner smile, and revelling in it.  For most people a truly personal gift, or a thoughtful poem (no matter how brief), is much more romantic than the pre-printed message in a Hallmark card or a pre-packaged box of chocolates (not that they don't have a place - yum).  Do something you enjoy and be inventive... create something that's uniquely romantic and sexy to you.  Make someone's heart flutter!

the perfect present

in the bedroom she waited

gift-wrapped and spread-legged

CLAIRE has been writing tiny, poetic nuggets of filth for over a year now and, helped by friends, loved-ones and talented Twitter followers, has written enough to keep readers, and herself, in a state of perpetual arousal.  You can read them for yourself on Twitter and Blogger, but be warned: the format may be playful, but the content is definitely not safe for work.

She's "working" from home

writing some Naughty Haiku

in her underwear

CLAIRE has a surname, and a respectable day-job, and hides the former to preserve the latter.   She dreams of one day being a successful published author, and knows that she's going about it very much the wrong way.

Five Questions Page

Realized it might be a good idea to make a separate page for "Five Questions" feature, so expect to see that shortly.  And a brand new High Coup is nigh... coup?

EDIT: Aaaaand here it is.

Five Questions for an Editor: George Swede

As an early Christmas (or fairly late Hanukkah) (or reeeally early Purim) present, we've got a great interview for you: George Swede, editor of the Haiku Society of America's flagship journal, Frogpond.  Let's see what he has to say....



1. What's your favorite translation of Matsuo Basho's famous "frog haiku"?

It's by Makoto Ueda in his book Bashō And His Interpreters, Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 140:

                      the old pond--
                      a frog jumps in,
                      water's sound

Professor Emeritus Ueda is fully bilingual and only such a translator could detect all the nuances in the original Japanese and put them into English.

2. What relationship do modern American haiku writers (haikuists? haikuers?) have to the old Japanese poets?  Are there ways we can learn from/expand on what they have done?  Do American writers move in new directions?

Most serious haiku poets do at some time study the classical Japanese masters. The work the old masters have produced is archetypal and is thus one reliable measure against which American poets can judge what they have written.

We certainly can learn from them the discipline needed to create lasting images.

As for moving in new directions, this is inevitable if a poetic form is to survive. Evolution is vital or extinction results. The modern Japanese haiku poets have evolved in various directions since the late 1800s and so have English-language haiku poets, starting in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

3. What role does the Haiku Society of America have in creating and/or fostering community in the United States?

Under the current President, Ce Rosenow, the HSA has become energized and created all kinds of outreach programs. Visit the HSA site and you'll see the wide range of its activities.

4. In the 2004 HSA definition of the haiku, a type of poetry called "zappai" ("miscellaneous amusements in doggerel verse (usually written in 5-7-5) with little or no literary value") is separated from senryu and haiku.  Do zappai have their place as well?

All poetic forms and sub-forms have their place in the constant evolution of poetry. Zappai are no exception.  High Coup Journal publishes a lot of zappai and thus ensures this form's survival. We have to protect all forms of poetic expression. The more there are, the better the chances for poetry to survive in its constant struggle against all the other art forms.

5. How can our readers get more involved, both with the HSA and Frogpond?

Readers can get more involved with HSA simply by joining. Members get the yearly three issues of Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America, as well as Ripples, the HSA Newsletter. Ripples informs members about all the haiku news in North America--regional meetings, workshops, special events, recently published collections, etc. As a member of HSA, one also gets the right to vote each year for who sits on the Executive Council, which includes the Frogpond editor.

Frogpond has an open submission policy, that is, someone does not have to be a member of HSA to get work published.  Usually, 40% to 45% of poems, reviews and articles come from non-members who then purchase the individual copy in which their work appears. For the full submission policy, go to the sample issue of Frogpond online.




GEORGE SWEDE has published 35 collections of poetry, 17 of them only haiku or tanka. He has been the editor of Frogpond since January 2008. His two latest collections were both published by Inkling Press in May 2010: Joy In Me Still (haiku) and White Thoughts, Blue Mind (tanka). For more information about these books go to George Swede.com. If you want to know more about Swede's life and work, go to Wikipedia and/or to his extensive George Swede web site.

Basho Meets Banksy: Christine Forster

Okay, so here's a bonus interview for you all, because Ms. Forster's Kickstarter project to write 1000 haiku for 1000 strangers is still running.  Donate if you can; read no matter what!  Let's see what she has to say...



1. Short answer prompt: Compare and contrast Kickstarter and the aristocratic artistic patrons of old.

I think Kickstarter has truly given artistic agency to the people and allowed them to choose they believe is worth funding. It's about experiencing and affirming art as a community now, versus a few select uber-weathly art sugar daddies determining tastes. People want to do something good, and feel like they're part of something new and different. That's why Kickstarter works so well. The old form of patronage may have been the best system for past eras, but now I think the model is shifting to fit the present.

2. 1000 haiku... that's going to take a while.  I mean, perhaps not as long as 1000 sestinas, but still... what inspired you to take on this project?

After a friend told me about Kickstarter, I knew I had to create a project around haiku. I started writing them in grad school, and they kept the creative part of my brain lit up while I was in a spirit-crushing grad school program. After I graduated, I felt burned out on academic and professional aspirations.  I realized that I needed to create an artistic project to focus on instead. The specifics of the project came to me in the middle of sleeping one night--I had a dream about 1000 Haiku.  Honestly, I think I was too mesmerized by the sight of those three zeros in "1000" to question it. It's a very ambitious but not impossible number.

3. Skirting the edges of legality?  You realize that would effectively make you the Banksy of haiku, no? 

I can only hope to be that a fraction that incredible. I love Banksy. In fact, in my project launch email to friends and family, I described 1000H1000S as a "Basho meets Banksy" moment. Even though I love the privacy of a small art form like haiku, I'm intrigued by public spaces and who gets to use them for what means. Why should business and corporations get to print ads on every blank space in the world? I think it's time that we get to see more beautiful, non commercial words and images in public spaces, and if that means taking a risk and putting some haiku out there, then so be it.


4. For a $1000 donation to the project you would seriously tattoo a haiku on yourself?

Why not? I can think of many worse tattoos I've seen. I was really curious to see if anyone would sponsor me at that level, but so far no one. It was more of a joke than anything, but I'd follow through with it.

5. Why do so many artists get so squeamish when money starts to become involved?

Oh, boy. I think people in general get squeamish about money. In a culture that promotes greed, you're hesitant to get too involved with the stuff, lest you lose all your priorities and start fantasizing about swimming pools filled with cash, gilded toilets, etc. On the flip side, there's this perpetuated glamorization of the starving, suffering artist and the idea that if you're not suffering horribly, then you can't make art.

Also, we live in a ridiculously demanding consumer culture where we've been taught to think that "the customer is always right". Once money enters the equation, it feels like a business deal where you have to negotiate and compromise, and that can be a vulnerable position to be in. I think artists should be conscientious and mindful about their funding sources, but being a martyr doesn't make for a good artist.

CHRISTINE FORSTER is working up a bio for us.  But here's her blog: http://landofteeny.blogspot.com/ .

Five Questions for a Techie: Chris Kish

This interview is with editor Chris Kish of 1st World View, a social technology website/blog.  He has recently started a Twitter feature known as the "Electronic Haiku," which shares tech news highlights in 17-syllable bites (or should that be "bytes"?).  Let's see what he has to say...



1. Okay, what happens when you mix the traditional nature-based Japanese art form of haiku with up-to-date news on technology?  No, this isn't a joke, this is what you're doing.  Explain.  Please.  You have piqued our interest.

It actually comes together really well, and for a few different reasons. Haiku are designed in a way that allows you to create a poem completely from a single thought, if you want to do that. Whether you see something interesting while taking a walk, or you think of some crazy observation on human behavior while you’re waiting to be seated at a restaurant, it doesn’t take long to write something about it in Haiku format. Even if it’s not perfect, or not complete, you can create the poem immediately after the idea hits you. You can write a Haiku in your head while you’re driving. Because the Haiku is such a fun and practical way to express ideas, I thought it would also be a fantastic way to express single opinions on technology and technology news.

Twitter was the inspiration for Electronic Haiku, along with the fact that I’ve been working on a more straight-forward technology website/blog (www.1stworldview.com) for about a year now and have enjoyed using Twitter to expand its audience. I noticed I was often just posting links and small comments, just another series of tweets that blend into the rest of people’s timelines. I was lacking a sense of energy and style, I guess. I wanted to come up with a way to give people more than just a relay of the technology news they could find at Engadget or TechCrunch, and more than just opinions that people could also find at those major tech sites. The whole point of 1st World View is to give people technology news and opinion in an easy-to-read, entertaining style, so "Electronic Haiku" fit right in.

With Haiku poetry on Twitter, we can relay not only technology news of the day, but include our thoughts and opinions as well. This way people can learn about new stories in technology, read an opinion or two on the matter, and enjoy poetry, all at the same time. A lot of technology news we read tends to take on a dry tone and becomes too technical, so "Electronic Haiku" will hopefully add some calming flavor into the mix.

I think using Haiku to discuss technology news pushes me to reconsider these stories from different perspectives and helps me to more thoroughly develop opinions on these topics. You might think you know how you feel about something, but write a Haiku about it and see how much more specific your opinions on the matter become. Because you have to consider your word choices so carefully, the format naturally pushes me to consider different angles. We only just started "Electronic Haiku," but what we’ve created so far seems pretty cool.


2. We always hear about the "must-have" electronic gift of the season. Anything you would warn us off of this time around?

Wait to buy your tablets, and your 3D televisions. Out of any gadgets that will be popular this season, I would avoid picking those up just yet. If that’s the thing your son or sister wants more than anything, of course, give them what they want. But those newest forms of technology are going to be changing, improving, and lowering in cost very rapidly in the near future.

This applies to most technology, except video games which come in obvious generations of systems. I think this concept currently applies to tablets more than anything, simply because they’ve been around the least amount of time. 3D Televisions also fall into that category; I mean, think back to the release of flat screen plasma televisions. I remember a family friend purchased one, about 32 inches, for over $2,000. Within a couple years he was looking at the new TV prices and kicking himself.

I’ll take this quick opportunity to suggest the best gift of the season - Xbox Kinect. At this point in time, people seem to be down on it, but that is only due to the lackluster wave of games released with it. Once some mature, adult-oriented games are released, things will change. If you are a fan of video games, just imagine what these game developers will come up with when you control the games with your body.


3. What effect do you think social networking (or other communications technologies) have on individuals' opinions and tastes?  Is this connectedness an overall good or bad thing?

It connects and disconnects us at the same time, an idea that was captured so well in the new Windows Phone commercials. People walking around on the street, but just staring down into a 4-inch abyss of information. Social networking does connect us, but it tends to take the opposite effect in other ways. I love David Fincher’s The Social Network because it showed Zuckerberg as a symbol for Facebook itself: have a ton of friends without actually having any friends.

People are spending more time communicating with close friends, but they also spend a lot time communicating with “friends” they have never met in person, and will never meet, and that isn’t a great thing. I feel like younger people are developing online friendships and taking them a little too far, and I bet a lot of kids would prefer an online friendship to one in person. Social networking helps to keep people in touch, but it makes friends spend less time together in person.

For me, social networks like Facebook and Twitter are tools to help stay in touch with friends who have moved. I am 25, so many of my friends have recently spread across the country, and Facebook helps me find out what’s going on with them. On the other hand, I never communicate with in-town friends on Facebook, or Twitter. I chat with them on Gmail, but only because it’s so easy on my phone and helps me save on text messaging costs.

As far as affecting opinions and taste, I think social networking is amazing. As people constantly submit quick ratings and opinions on products, we will slowly grow a better understanding of all the products out there. The main problem was that people only went online and gave reviews of a product when they had something to complain about. Now, since it’s so quick and easy to submit good or bad reviews, we can get a more accurate user rating for products. Time will constantly improve this system of user reviews.



4. The Internet has been great for all of us to get our thoughts out there immediately; unlike the letter-writers of old, however, our communications are increasingly ephemeral.  How do you think society will handle this loss of permanent records of communication?

Although I don’t always reach my goal of posting once every day on 1stworldview.com, I do multiple posts every week. Over the last year or so, I have amassed a nice collection of writing. Even though I save all of the articles onto my computer, I still worry every time I open up the website that everything will be gone. That just happened to my sister’s website and she does not think she will ever get it back.

In the end, though, I can just save it in Word,  save it to my back up hard drive, save it to a flash drive, print it, and I’m set. When it comes down to it, the things that matter will be saved. They will be saved multiple times in multiple places.

In a way, the increasingly ephemeral online world serves as a kind of filter, weeding out the best of the best. If someone sends out a Tweet that is just one of the most ingenious, insightful sentences of all time, you can bet money that people will find it. It will spread, and suddenly it will be on websites, blogs, Facebook, and of course, splattered all over Twitter.

Even if you haven’t written the next society-altering Tweet, you can save it in many different ways and in many different places. You can even print it! So, I actually don’t think society will have to deal with a loss of permanent records.


5. How can the worlds of technology and poetry benefit from cross-pollinating?

They will both benefit from one-another in different ways. While poetry has been dissected and twisted around to fit any subject matter and style possible, I think technology will add a sense of intelligence and respectability. A lot of poetry is just psuedo-symbolic gibberish, overly layered in emotions and twisted around to be complicated for the sake of being falsely complex. Instead, let’s make poetry about facts and figures. Instead of writing poetry just to create poetry, let’s write poetry that has a more concrete purpose. I think crossing technology news into Haiku poetry will not only add to the fun, playful nature of the poems, but will force us to come up with wordplay and opinions we otherwise would never have thought of.

Poetry, on the other hand, can also benefit from technology news. I created 1stWorldView, then "Electronic Haiku," for people like me. I love technology, but I don’t have degree in CSS and JavaScript. I love using Twitter, but I have no idea how it works. I am a writer, but I love technology and wish I could enjoy reading more about it (or at least understand more of what I’m reading). I often read tech articles and find myself mentally drifting to something completely unrelated. By providing technology news and opinions from a very basic perspective, we hope to simplify technology news so its entertaining and interesting to people who aren’t necessarily in the technology industry, but still use smartphones, tablets, laptops, Facebook, and Google.

Branching off from this idea came "Electronic Haiku." By integrating Haiku poetry into the world of technology news, people will be exercising their brains in multiple ways. Not only will they be enjoying technology news and opinions, but they will  be enjoying art as well. Art is basically just a representation of life through one medium or another, so it makes sense that we would explore technology through an artform like this. If anything, "Electronic Haiku" will add some moisture to currently dry tech news. The fact that Twitter is such a perfect tool for posting "Electronic Haiku" seems fitting. Crossing technology news into Haiku poetry should symbolize how technology has become such a natural part of life.




CHRIS KISH is a writer living in Phoenix. An Arizona native, he graduated from the University of Arizona and currently works as lead writer and editor of the social technology blog 1st World View as well as the in-house writer for a local marketing company. Chris is interested in creative writing for film, television, and video games. He enjoys blogging about social technology, watching the English Premier League, cycling, and playing Halo.

Five Questions for an Editor: Jeffrey Woodward

Our Five Questions interview this month is with Jeffrey Woodward of Haibun Today.  (For those who haven't heard of the haibun before, it is a writing form that incorporates prose writing with haiku-- sometimes one of each, sometimes more than one of each.)

Let's see what he has to say...

1. There are obviously formal/technical differences between the haiku and the haibun. What would you say are some of the "spiritual" differences, or the differences of effect?

Haiku is remarkably democratic. The literate person who learns its basic principles and techniques has a fair chance of composing passable examples and, in “seventeen syllables or less,” of convincing his contemporaries, occasionally, that he has said more than he, in fact, has. Roland Barthes, in Empire of Signs, offered a lucid explanation for why this is so when he wrote, “While being quite intelligible, the haiku means nothing, and it is by this double condition that it seems open to meaning in a particularly available, serviceable way...”

Haibun cannot mean everything by meaning nothing, as Barthes implied haiku might, and it cannot do so precisely because it invites the many complications that haiku, by its brevity, forbids. The margin for ambiguity shrinks with each added syllable, sentence or paragraph and with each narrative or expository turn that haibun admits. Writers

of even a modest haibun of one or two hundred words are unlikely to convince an intelligent reader of their profundity, therefore, unless what they have written, in fact, is profound. One distinction between haiku and haibun is the degree of difficulty. Haibun must accept and compound risk even as haiku seeks to avoid or minimize the same. Consider haibun as a journey over unexplored terrain, the destination undetermined or unknown.

2. In your 2009 interview with Contemporary Haibun Online, you discuss haiku's "escape" from the orthodox English 5-7-5 structure. How has this benefited haiku and haibun?

This communal shift, if you will, from observation of a syllabic rule to today’s free treatment is a matter for the literary historian of haiku. The characterization of this change as an escape from orthodoxy, on the other hand, belongs to my interviewer and not to me. What the majority of practitioners did yesterday or does today can be only of relative interest from the point-of-view of haiku as literary art. Significant poets have always been in the minority and what they write, whether it accomodates or violates a syllabic norm, inevitably commands the serious reader’s attention.

3. Earlier in the same interview, you joke about your initial experiences with haiku and how you came to know the form as having "consisted of 17 syllables—neither one more nor one less." After the breaking of the orthodox mold, is there a place for counting syllables or morae/on to fit a fixed form?

A strong poet will adopt the form that is most suitable for his current purpose, whether that form is free or fixed. The existence of any form is an invitation to the poet to attempt to master and exploit it. A haiku will be judged strong or weak, in my opinion, not according to whether it has or does not have x-number of syllables but according to the genius of its composer. Counting syllables will continue to have a place in haiku as long as one poet can demonstrate its place by his good practice.

4. Building on the previous question, what is your take on New Formalism?

New Formalism is a convenient handle for literary critics and publicists. One need only remember that Imagism, to cite a well-known example, was broad enough to contain Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, H.D. and Richard Aldington, in order to remind oneself that little of substance can be learned from the simplifications that are employed in naming and marketing a literary school. New Formalism reinvigorated the flagging debate about poetic form and its place in modern or post-modern poetry that the New Criticism had initiated in the 30s and 40s. Important formalist poets, however, were publishing long before the advent of New Formalism; Stanley Kunitz, Yvor Winters and Howard Nemerov might be cited nor should we forget the examples of Robert Frost or Edwin Arlington Robinson, of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore or Hart Crane. No art is without form. It should not be considered a provocation, therefore, to observe that there is little that is new in New Formalism’s advocacy of form.

5. What advice would you have for burgeoning poets who have written some haiku but have yet to try the haibun form? What might motivate them to try it?

Study the best haibun available in print and online. Try, when you happen upon an appropriate and powerful model, to learn the author’s techniques by imitation. When you have learned all that you can through imitation, do otherwise. And what might motivate the burgeoning poet to try haibun? An opportunity to discover the New World-- by traversing the globe itself or by looking closely around his own room.

JEFFREY WOODWARD resides in Detroit, MI. His poems and articles are published in periodicals throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He currently edits Haibun Today and formerly edited Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose. A collection of his poems, In Passing, was published in 2007 and he edited The Tanka Prose Anthology in 2008.