HNA 2007

Lenard D. Moore, Bob Moyer, and Dave Russo organized Haiku North America 2007 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

This was the first Haiku North America conference in the South. We had over 50 presenters from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Special guests included Sonia Sanchez and Kalamu ya Salaam. Presenters include many of the best haiku poets writing in English, including Cor van den Heuvel, Alan Pizzarelli, William J. Higginson, Penny Harter, George Swede, Lenard D. Moore, Randy Brooks, John Barlow, Jim Kacian, A. C. Missias, Roberta Beary, Stanford M. Forrester, and many others.

PDF version of the Web site for HNA 2007: HNA 2007

Haiku: Art of the Short Poem

Tazuo Yamaguchi of Poem Studios and Randy Brooks of Brooks Books have joined forces to create Haiku: The Art of the Short Poem, a DVD and book combination. The film is probably the first feature-length documentary about haiku in English. The book is an anthology of poems that appear in the film.

The film is based on a series of interviews that Tazuo conducted with haiku poets at Haiku North America 2007. The poets come from various backgrounds and have different personalities and aesthetics. Tazuo selects and blends these interviews to reveal a diverse set of ideas and passions about haiku. Several poets describe their first encounter with haiku by the Japanese masters—how something in these poems flashed across oceans and centuries and touched them in a profound way. Other poets describe the need, in the words of Sonia Sanchez, “Not just to learn the form, but to transform the form.”  Another layer is Tazuo’s own perspective, that of a Japanese-American whose family photos often show haiku on scrolls in the background; a performance poet who has won titles in national head-to-head haiku competitions; a videographer who has spent a good part of the last decade capturing poetry on film.

Perhaps because of the diverse views at the conference, a spirit of generosity, exploration, and humor comes across in the interviews. The best thing about the film might be that it enables us to experience some of the currents and cross-currents of haiku in English, as they existed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in August of 2007.

Brooks Books Web page for Haiku: The Art of the Short Poem: http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/haikufilm/

Movie Trailer for Haiku: The Art of the Short Poem: http://www.youtube.com/poemstudios

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