On Robert Spiess, the Haiku Gatekeeper

New to the Interviews page is “The Haiku Gatekeeper: An Interview with Robert Spiess,” also available through the Essays page. Spiess edited the English language’s flagship haiku journal, Modern Haiku, for nearly a quarter century, and died in early 2002. I had been conducting this interview with him over many years, via postal mail, starting in the mid 1990s. For nearly two decades I linked to this interview on the Modern Haiku page, where it was originally published in July 2002, but have just added it to my own site, and also include photographs and a link to an earlier and longer draft of my introduction. On her Baymoon website, Joan Zimmerman referred to this interview as “a remarkable essay of living history.” If you haven’t already read this interview, and my appreciative introduction, please do.