Here's a Peek! 
Some of the Presentations Confirmed for
Haiku North America 2013

The Haiku North America 2013 conference schedule is still being formed, but here's a peek at some of the Presentations, Papers, Performances, Readings, and Workshops that are already confirmed.  More to come, so please keep checking back for updates!

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Roberta Beary - East Coast, USA
"TIMELINE: The Interval from Past to Present - Visual Haibun" (Presentation, Audience Participation)

TIMELINE is a presentation on the creation of visual haibun through the use of personal memorabilia. Event ticket stubs/programs, school certificates, old letters, newspaper clippings and photographic images of relatives and friends (living and deceased) are examples of personal memorabilia. The importance of resonance in haibun will be stressed.

John Stevenson - New York, USA
"A Few Well Chosen Words" (Workshop)

While haiku is not a narrative form, the extraction and refinement of resonance from a narrative is one method of offering an affecting poem. This workshop will use Playback Theatre exercises. (No theatre experience is needed.) 

Jim Kacian - East Coast, USA
"Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years Release Celebration and Reading" (Reading/Performance)

A general sampling of work from the W. W. Norton publication Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. The timing of its release has been set to coordinate with the dates of the Haiku North America Conference, giving HNA attendees the first look at the volume.

Ron Moss - Tasmania, Australia
"Haiga Presentation" (Presentation)

During this haiga session, Ron Moss will present his work over the past decade, with some exploration and discussion of form and style.

Paul MacNeil - Florida, USA, and friends: Yu Chang - New York, USA, Sophia Frentz - New Zealand, Ron Moss - Tasmania, Australia, Sandra Simpson - New Zealand, John Stevenson - New York, USA
"Introduction to Renku and a Performance Reading of HSA's Einbond Renku Contest, Grand Prize winners - plus a surprise!" (Performance Reading)

Paul MacNeil and friends will perform a renku reading interpretively following the conference theme: "... from one wave to the next." Four kasen (36 stanza) renku by three writing groups will be performed. The renku adhere to classic form yet are written in modern English and topically of our time. Three renku were winners of the Haiku Society of America's Einbond Renku Competition; the fourth will be a surprise!

Penny Harter - New Jersey, USA
"Transforming Free Verse & Prose Poems Into Haibun" (Presentation and Workshop)

If you write free verse and/or prose poems and have some that haven't gelled for you yet---or that you'd just enjoy experimenting with---consider changing them into haibun. Penny Harter will share her process for doing so, with specific examples from those two genres and the haibun they became. You can come just to listen, or bring a poem or prose-poem with you that you'd like to work on and maybe share the results.

Susan Antolin - California, USA
"Remembering Nick Virgilio, a film by Sean Dougherty" (Documentary Film)

Remembering Nick Virgilio is a film that movingly portrays the journey of Nick Virgilio---a pioneer of American haiku poetry---in his quest to celebrate life's simplest moments and to wrestle with the deep grief that ensued following his youngest brother's death in Vietnam. The 30-minute documentary, which has never been shown outside of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, will leave viewers suspended in the interval between words and silence.

Paul Miller (who writes as "paul m.") - Rhode Island, USA
"War and Haiku" (Paper/Presentation)

A history of haiku on war written by both participants and commentators. This presentation will examine the literary themes of war haiku, as well as look at the moral authority and authenticity of their creation. An honest look at what war haiku are trying to accomplish, how they are perceived by readers, and how they can succeed or fail.

David G. Lanoue  - Louisiana, USA
"Stories behind the Haiku: Cultural Memory in Issa" (Paper)

Issa packs many of his haiku with allusions to literary classics and folklore. He makes references to Chinese sources, Japanese sources, and to myriad folktales. Such allusions flow naturally from Issa looking inward and outward at the same time. Earlier cultural narratives inform his consciousness just as much as what his eyes are seeing or his ears hearing. Haiku comes to life in the interval between the past and now.

Charles Trumbull - New Mexico, USA
"Misdirection in Haiku" (Paper)

Both Japanese- and English-language haiku are noteworthy for their directness, objectivity, and dedication to Truth. In this presentation we will examine a few instances that run counter to these norms yet have produced interesting results.

Jessica Tremblay - Canada, and 6 Special Guests
"Pecha Kucha at HNA!" (Presentation)

In this exciting series of short "pecha kucha" presentations, poets, cartoonists, artists, event organizers and publishers will talk about innovative ways they write, illustrate, promote and publish haiku. Pecha kucha is the Japanese term for "chit-chat" and is a presentation style that uses 20 slides timed at 20 seconds each, a format that is well-suited for a haiku talk. Come see how it's done!

Note: Jessica Tremblay is the author of Old Pond Comics, a haiku cartoon featuring Master Kawazu (the frog that inspired Basho's famous haiku). In another segment of the schedule she will share some Old Pond Comics with us.

There are many more presentations, papers, performances, readings, workshops, and panels still in the process of being confirmed, involving poets from the Australia, Canada, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the USA. And it's rumored that Haiku Elvis just might make an appearance! Stay Tuned!