Haiku Targets
Instructor: Michael Dylan Welch
Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Time: 5:00-8:00pm (Pacific)
Note: The 3rd hour of this workshop will be intended for haiku sharing and discussion.
Price: $25 (payment options)
To register for this workshop, please contact Mark Danowsky (Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART) at oneartpoetry@gmail.com
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Haiku Targets
Haiku poetry has a rich history in Japanese and English that extends far beyond counting syllables. This workshop, led by Michael Dylan Welch, explores various targets you have at your disposal in writing literary haiku. They include seasonal references (kigo), a two-part juxtapositional structure (equivalent to using a kireji, or cutting word), and chiefly objective sensory imagery. In our first two hours we’ll explore and discuss example poems and learn a bit of haiku history (including poems by Japanese masters). In the optional third hour, we’ll try a writing exercise and share our poems for discussion. Rules are obligations but targets are opportunities, and some of the “rules” people believe about haiku are essentially myths. Learn how to make the most of the opportunities you have to improve each haiku, and how these techniques can help you improve your longer poetry.
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Michael Dylan Welch has been investigating haiku since 1976. He has published dozens of haiku books, judged and won first place in many haiku contests, and has had his haiku, longer poems, essays, and reviews published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. Michael is a cofounder and director of the Haiku North America conference (1991), cofounder of the American Haiku Archives (1996), founder and president of the Tanka Society of America (2000), cofounder and director of the Seabeck Haiku Getaway (2008), and founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) (2010). He is also an officer of Haiku Northwest, founder and curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, and president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword. Michael served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, and in 2013 was keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo. In 2012, one of his translations from the Japanese appeared on the back of 150 million US postage stamps, and his haiku have also been carved into stone in New Zealand and printed on balloons in Los Angeles. Michael documents his publications and other poetry activities at www.graceguts.com. He sees haiku as a poetic path to empathy and vulnerability, preferring to emphasize targets for haiku instead of rules.
