1 August 2023

July has been a busy month on Graceguts. Fasten your seatbelts!

• Several big new additions follow my publication in June of Earthworks, the 2023 Haiku North America conference anthology, which I coedited with Julie Schwerin. I’ve added information on the Books and Press Here pages, and Earthworks has its own separate page (where I also added 2023 HNA group photos). I’ve also uploaded “Places of the Heart” to the Introductions page, a contributor list, and a best-of selected haiku page. The book is available on Amazon.

• Also as a result of HNA and the 2023 Tanka Society of America Tanka Monday event, I created two new trifolds, for haiku and tanka respectively: “Mandolin Summer” and “Turtles in the Garden.” They are both now listed on the Trifolds page, and you can view or download them on the Trifold Downloads page.

• Another big addition, on the Haiga page, is a re-creation of “Free Thinking” and “Gathering Rosebuds,” both of which had been on HaigaOnline, but the links no longer work. These two pages present selections of my neon buddha photo-haiga. Elsewhere, I’ve worked on updating any links to HaigaOnline to point to Wayback Machine versions, if available.

• On the Interviews page, look for “New to Haiku: Advice for Beginners,” an extensive interview with me by Julie Bloss Kelsey that recently appeared in two parts on the Haiku Foundation website.

• On the Press Here book page for paul m.’s Finding the Way, I’ve added text from a 2003 Modern Haiku review of the book by Tom Clausen.

• The Poems About Haiku page now features “Haiku in Amsterdam” by Glenn Lyvers, “Haiku, Hacky Sack and Fluxus Synesthesia” by Taylor Mignon, and “What is a haiku?” by Nicholas A. Virgilio.

• On the Poems by Others page, look for Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Even Such Is Time” and Marvin Bell’s “Thirty-Two Statements About Writing Poetry.”

• The Memorial Haiku page (available through Haiku and Senryu) now includes new poems written for William J. Higginson and Peggy Willis Lyles, who died in 2008 and 2010.

• The Blurbs page now offers a short appreciation I wrote for Nicole Renée La Follette’s 2023 poetry book Unique, Like Everyone.

• On the Reports page, I’ve added my “President’s Message” from Ribbons 17:3, Fall 2021, and my “President’s Message” from Ribbons 19:2, Spring/Summer 2023. I’ve also added Ribbons cover images to these and my other President’s Message pages.

• Also on the Reports page, looks for the results of the 2023 Mukai Farm and Gardens Haikufest Contest, which I cojudged this April. And check out my 2023 Japan Fair Haiku Contest results and commentary too. Also look for winning poems from the Seattle Japanese Garden’s Moon Viewing Haiku Contests for 2015, 2016, and 2017, which for some reason I hadn’t added previously.

• On the Digressions page, please explore the new Moon Viewing page, which lists all the haiku contests I’ve judged for the Seattle Japanese Garden, from 2010 to the present, complete with links to the contest results, plus the amazing and heartwarming “Modest Proposal” story. My digression on Racquetball also includes some new links and other tweaks. The Haiku Invitational digression now includes a list of all the judges for the 2023 Haiku Invitational.

• Also on the Digressions page for Haiku North America, I’ve added names for the Higginson lecturers since this tradition began in 2011. I’ve also listed links to all my photographs from the 2023 conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. These links are also available on the Photographs page, where I also link to my photos of the 2023 Tanka Monday conference.

• I’ve recently added three new Postscripts. The first is brief comments about my review of Ion Codrescu’s Drawings Among Haiku. The second offers some new thoughts about my “Finding the Sky” essay. And the third is about Hermann Hesse and wonder in response to my essay, “The Seed of Wonder.”

• The Bio and Links pages now link to my new Letterboxd account, where I’ve recently been documenting movies I’ve watched. I keep detailed lists and have hundreds of movies still to add.

• The Videos page (which also includes audio links) now sports WUGA radio links for my “Visiting Shiki” poem broadcast on 26 March 2023 and a dozen of my haiku broadcast on 30 April 2023. Also new to Videos is a link to the 7th Annual Tennessee Poets Day WC-TV broadcast, with me reading haiku and longer poems.

• I’ve updated my Appearances page with details of various readings and workshops in conjunction with the September 2023 LitFuse poetry festival in Tieton, Washington, where I will be giving two haiku workshops and a presentation on Mary Oliver on the theme of attention in poetry. More event details still to be added.

• On the From HNA Conference Anthologies pages, I’ve added the years of each anthology, reordered all the poems so the most recent appears first, added a few clarifications at the top, and have added my poem for the 2023 anthology, Earthworks.

• Some smaller additions:

  • • New to Haibun is “Albatross,” recently published in Drifting Sands Haibun.

    • New to Links is a new listing for Rhyvers.

    • New to Haiku Workshops (available through Workshops) is an appreciation by Elizabeth Fanto.

    • Many of the pages available through the Sequences page now have images added.

• And over on my Rengay website, check out “An Autumn Tale,” a two-person rengay I wrote with my daughter Sarah. More new rengay coming soon, including my rengay with Ion Codrescu that just won first place in the 2023 Haiku Society of America rengay contest.