using this index-card process since 1989, before I had a computer, but I‘m finding it increasingly difficult to put my finger on certain poems, despite having everything alphabetized in various index- card boxes. How much easier it would be to search a database electronically to find, for example, a poem on a particular theme or season. So that‘s another project—to put all my thousands of published haiku and senryu and tanka into a database, not to mention other haiku that happen not to have been published yet. I might not bother with more that I‘ve tried to get published, without success, never mind many more that never made it out of my notebooks onto index cards.
I suppose it‘s not only ideas that serve as motivation, but also opportunities. In addition to a few exciting projects that I won‘t mention yet, I continue to give attention to the following poetry and writing activities, in no particular order:
1 National Haiku Writing Month, or NaHaiWriMo. I started this in October of 2010, and created a Facebook page and a website for it, derived from National Novel Writing Month (I finished my first novel for NaNoWriMo in November of 2010). I chose February as the month for NaHaiWriMo because I liked the idea of associating the shortest month with the world‘s shortest genre of poetry. The Facebook page typically has more than 6,000 views, postings, and comments each week, which continues to amaze me (there are more than 650 active monthly users now). I provided daily writing prompts that first month, which helped to galvanize and focus the group, I think. Thanks to the writing prompts, a thriving community has emerged. When February ended, everyone liked the prompts so much that I‘ve continued with the prompts ever since—soe
e
vrymonth has turned out to
be National Haiku Writing Month! And participants have come from every corner of the world, so it‘s really International Haiku Writing Year. But InHaiWriYe is even more difficult to say, so I‘ll continue to make each February the main focus. Until then, I‘ve been arranging for a guest prompter each month, and the group has been fortunate to have the following people help out so far: Alan Summers, Melissa Allen, Cara Holman, Paul David Mean, Susan Delphine Delaney, Terri Hale French, Johnny Baranski, Pris Campbell, Carlos Colón, and Stella Pierides. You can visit the NaHaiWriMo website at
http://sites.google.com/site/nahaiwrimo/home.
2. Facebook. I really think Facebook can revolutionize haiku, if it isn‘t already doing so, certainly in the connections between haiku poets. The NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook has taught me that. People are also sharing their haiku on their own Facebook pages, and perhaps reaching more readers than they would with a small haiku journal, even though the poems quickly disappear from view. Same with Twitter, which has invited many millions of people into the compressed brevity of haiku. On my own Facebook page, I‘ve also enjoyed posting hopefully witty haiku cartoons, called ―The Simpsons Do Haiku,‖ with jokes or comments that I‘ve written to go with cartoon images from the Sim
po snsTV show (considered fair use because it‘s a parody). I‘ve posted maybe eighty such
cartoons, and have at least a hundred more to go, some of which focus on NaHaiWriMo, some on the neon buddha, but mostly just poke fun at haiku, the haiku community, and the haiku life—or me. This sort of sharing is bringing haiku poets together from around the world, which is remarkable. All the poems people shared on NaHaiWriMo, by the way, prompted a useful discussion on whether such poems would be considered
published.Fro
go ij
such postings to be published, even when posted to public Facebook forums with hundreds of members. This policy matches whatH
ainxdoes, although certain other journals don‘t agree. The
fact is that the poems cycle out of view quickly enough each day that you can easily miss poems, and they‘re not (yet?) searchable the way websites and blogs are, so they‘re much more ephemeral than blog and website postings. Considering these poems as unpublished is a good change, I think. It‘s equivalent to sharing one‘s haiku in a haiku workshop at a library or a friend‘s living room, so why not consider such work unpublished?
66
pndreconsidered its policy and no longer considers
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