Enlarging the Circle
silent Friends meeting . . .
the sound of chairs being moved
to enlarge the circle
Robert Major
One of the first Haiku Northwest meetings I attended, in the 1990s, took place in Francine Porad’s home on Mercer Island. When I entered Francine’s living room, I was surprised at how many people had gathered in a circle, filling the easy chairs and all the upright chairs pulled from the dining room. Not surprising, but notable, was how warm and friendly each poet was. Everyone shared not just a passion for haiku but also a genuine support for each other, wherever they were on their poetic path. This emphasis on social harmony, not just literary understanding, was a hallmark of how Francine conducted the group’s gatherings.
Nor was it just Francine. These were not just her meetings, as founder of Haiku Northwest, but the group’s meetings. From the beginning Francine encouraged democracy and consensus, with a series of regional coordinators who soon began to plan events, readings, and annual anthologies with assistance from everyone who attended meetings. By engaging the participation of a variety of poets, Francine created a welcoming and inspiring atmosphere that the group has continued to emphasize, even in the nearly two decades since Francine died in 2006.
That spirit of consensus also guided the creation of this book. Glimmering Hour commemorates the 35th anniversary of Haiku Northwest, focusing on the history of the last ten years. The group’s inaugural meeting took place near Seattle at the Bellevue Public Library on September 15, 1988, and we celebrated our first 25 years by publishing an earlier anthology, No Longer Strangers, in 2014. Our 35th anniversary anthology celebrates the decade from 2014 to 2024. For this book, our team of editors worked together to solicit submissions from haiku poets living in our region, to select and sequence the poems and artwork, and to develop additional content. This book includes a memorial section that honors members who died since we published our 25th anniversary anthology. We thank the families or executors who extended their permission for us to include this work, acknowledging that we were not able to reach the next of kin of two poets but still thought it valuable to include their poems. We also offer an essay by Connie Hutchison celebrating the life and influence of our founder, Francine Porad, and supplementary material that we invite you to explore.
As was true for everyone around the world, our history in the last ten years faced a local upheaval with the global pandemic. In 2020 we quickly switched to meeting online, and although this was new technology for many of us, we did our best to adapt, with the serendipitous benefit of being able to welcome many poets from farther afield, enlarging our circle. We continue to hold many of our meetings online. Everyone has always been welcome to attend any of our events, but during the pandemic the number of possible (and actual) attendees greatly increased, representing a widening variety of locations where people lived. We have tried to keep the circle as large as possible with continued online meetings, even while we have also held a few meetings in person since the pandemic waned.
Our annual Seabeck Haiku Getaway, which began in 2008, also faced pandemic challenges. We met online in 2020, but in late 2021, with attendees wearing masks and verifying vaccination, we were again able to meet in person at the Seabeck Conference Center, and 2024 marks the 17th year of these annual retreats. At these much-loved haiku jamborees, the first night always begins with everyone seated in a circle, though increasing numbers make it hard to fit everyone in. The Seabeck retreat has become the highlight of our year, and it’s been a special joy to have people attend from across the United States, from Canada, and occasionally from other countries, such as Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Romania. Our Seabeck gatherings have also resulted in annual retreat anthologies, which we itemize in a list of Haiku Northwest publications near the end of this book.
One accomplishment at the start of the last ten years was the introduction of Haiku Northwest officers. At the end of 2013 we elected a slate of officers to run Haiku Northwest, and their terms began in 2014. As a result, the last decade of our history has benefited from a new organizational structure. Previously, Haiku Northwest was led by an elected regional coordinator of the Haiku Society of America, but we decided to elect our own officers, letting the regional coordinator position be administered separately by the HSA. An appendix in this book lists all our officers from 2014 through 2024. The addition of officers has spread the work to more hands, another way of widening the circle.
An additional recent accomplishment was our incorporation as we sought to formalize both fiscal and operational accountability. Thanks largely to the work of Dianne Garcia, we were granted federal tax-exempt status on July 13, 2023, retroactive to our date of incorporation as a nonprofit in Washington state on December 13, 2021. The process entailed the drafting of bylaws and articles of incorporation that gave the board of directors and officers defined responsibilities. This step was also motivated, at least in part, by a generous financial gift from one of our members, Jay Gelzer, who died in 2012. Our incorporation limits membership to residents of Washington state, but we invite anyone anywhere to join our circle of haiku camaraderie through our mailing list and to attend any of our meetings, in person or online. Through all its endeavors, the organization conscientiously follows its mission statement, adopted in February of 2021: “Haiku Northwest educates and enriches the public by celebrating and sharing the art of haiku poetry of the Pacific Northwest.” Talk about expanding the circle!
Other accomplishments in the last decade include the permanent installation of 20 haiku plaques around the Seabeck Conference Center campus in 2019 and establishing Haiku Northwest’s YouTube channel in 2020, complete with videos of Porad Award winners from 2018 and later, plus a video anthology titled “The Well-Worn Path.” We created Haiku Northwest Press in 2020, and in 2021 we completed an extensive overhaul and redesign of our haikunorthwest.org website, making it secure and optimized for phones and tablets, not just personal computers. We also continued ongoing activities to widen our connection with other poetry and cultural organizations in the Seattle area and beyond. One example is our partnership with the Puget Sound Sumi Artists and particularly its Haiga Adventure Study Group, which has provided haiga and sumi-e exhibits at our Seabeck weekends for more than a decade. In addition, we continued to sponsor the annual Porad Award for haiku, which marked its 20th year in 2023. Haiku Northwest activities are limited by the energy of those who can help, so we always welcome increased engagement.
The book you now hold in your hands is an extension of those early meetings convened in Francine Porad’s living room—displaying the circle of haiku appreciation we have eagerly developed in the last ten years, adding to the previous 25. In Francine’s tradition of also being a visual artist, this book features the artwork of one of our members, Sheila Sondik, who has provided numerous pieces of her distinctive sumi paintings on crinkled paper. We are especially pleased to feature poems by haiku poets living in Washington state, including two who recently moved to Oregon but who were an integral part of our Washington membership before they relocated. We thank all our members for entrusting us with their poems.
The heart of this book, however, is not the 158 haiku and senryu that make up the main part of these pages, but the 79 poets behind them—including eleven poets in our memorial section, represented by an additional 44 poems. Other Washington poets among our membership, even if not represented here, also lie at the heart of Haiku Northwest. Each poet adds their personality and story to our organization, helping to complete the circle. All of us can celebrate our 35th anniversary by enjoying this anthology, which affirms that the last ten years have been a glimmering hour, with more to come.
Michael Dylan Welch
I also have the following poems in Glimmering Hour:
woods walk—
I catch the cobwebs
that miss my son
dappled sun—
the carousel stops
on a high note
fallen sparrow—
a dusting of snow
slightly melted