Berries and Cream

Jeanne Emrich, interviewed by Michael Dylan Welch

Stephen Addiss, introduction

Interview by Michael Dylan Welch with Jeanne Emrich, the founder of Haiga Online, on the extent and development of haiga (paintings with haiku/calligraphy) as practiced in North America. Includes 12-page colour insert featuring haiga by a variety of contributing artists. Introduction by Stephen Addiss, renowned expert on Japanese haiga.

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2000, saddle-stapled, 48 pages, 5½ x 8½ inches, ISBN 1-878798-22-7

“Jeanne Emrich has quickly distinguished herself as an advocate of haiga and as a fine haiku poet. She is the author of The Haiku Habit (1996) and Barely Dawn (1999), both illustrated by Susan Frame. She has been a member of the Haiku Society of America since 1995 and is a member of the society’s education committee. In 1998 she published The Haiku Habit Workshop, a guidebook and introduction to haiku that the Haiku Society of America adopted for its haiku educational packet. She also uses the guidebook in her workshops at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She lives in nearby Bloomington with her husband Glenn and their two children. Jeanne has been an active artist for many years and in 1983 she cofounded the Minnesota Watercolor Society, and also currently serves as the Minnesota State Association president of the National League of American Pen Women. In addition to being an artist and poet, Jeanne is webmaster of “Haiga Online,” a website devoted to the art of combining haiku, calligraphy, and painting. In this interview by Michael Dylan Welch, introduced by haiga expert Stephen Addiss, Jeanne explores the length and breadth of haiga as it is practiced in North America.” —from the back cover

Copies of this tan-renga haiga, with artwork by Jeanne Emrich, were given out as a special lagniappe for everyone who first ordered Berries and Cream.

Jeanne Emrich is a poet and artist living in Edina, Minnesota. She has a B.A. in art history from the University of Minnesota. Jeanne cofounded the Minnesota Watercolor Society and the Minnesota Haiku Society. She founded and was the first webmaster of Haiga Online: A Journal of Painting and Poetry, the first online haiga journal. She is the author of The Haiku Habit (Lone Egret Press, 1996) and Barely Dawn (Lone Egret Press , 1999). Educational materials by Jeanne are included in teachers’ guides distributed by both the Haiku Society of America and the Tanka Society of America. She has taught haiku, tanka, and haiga at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, was the vice-president of the Tanka Society of America, and served as editor of Reeds: Contemporary Haiga. Her first collection of tanka, The Pleides at Dawn, was published in 2007.

See Jeanne Emrich’s Minnesota Artists web page and the Global Haiku Traditions reader response essay.