Poetry Readings

I have given readings of my poetry for a variety of events, ranging from living-room salons to large conferences and corporate events. Other events have included festivals, retreats, and poetry reading series, plus Zoom performances. My readings are typically a mix of the following original work, including both serious and humourous content.

• Haiku and senryu

• Tanka

• Translations from the Japanese

• American Sentences (Allen Ginsberg’s form)

• Longer poetry

• Prose poetry

• Visual, concrete, and erasure poetry

• Collaborative poetry (renku, rengay, tan-renga, and other forms)

• Haiga and photo-haiga (requires PowerPoint and a projector/screen for display)

• Occasionally short fiction

I can also offer PowerPoint presentations featuring the following haiku and tanka sequences (a few of these have also been converted to short movies, with music):

• • All About the Season (Christmas and holiday poems)

  • Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables)

  • Buried (funeral sequence) [unpublished]

  • The Day Before (dying sequence) [unpublished]

  • Fine Lines (incorporating lines of famous poems and other writing)

  • First Snow (a best-of selection, with Japanese translations)

  • Five Seasons (a best-of selection)

  • Forgiveness (thematic sequence) [unpublished]

  • The Haijin’s Tweed Coat (incorporating names of well-known haiku journals)

  • The Haiku Anthology (20 poems from Cor van den Heuvel’s anthology)

  • Haiku Society of America Anthologies (yearly additions since 1993)

  • On the Art of Writing Haiku (my poems from The Haiku Anthology, paired with quotations about writing)

  • Pop Fly (baseball haiku)

  • The Renga Party (about writing collaboratively)

  • The Second Eye (tanka sequence about my first child’s birth)

  • Separation (thematic sequence)

  • Shēngxiào (Chinese zodiac poems)

  • Shichifukujin (tanka about the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan)

  • Tanabata Poems (celebrating Japan’s star festival) [unpublished]

  • Things Haiku Say (longer poem) [unpublished]

  • Thornewood Poems (nature sequence)

  • Troubled Moon (moon poems) [unpublished]

  • We Are All God’s Poems (tanka poems)

The following presentations of haiku feature work by other poets:

• • Behind the Mask (pandemic haiku by Kathy Uyen Nguyen)

  • Close to the Wind (2013 Haiku North America conference anthology poems)

  • Once Upon a Time (2015 Haiku North America conference anthology poems)

  • Earthsigns (2017 Haiku North America conference anthology poems)

  • Sitting in the Sun (2019 Haiku North America conference anthology poems)

  • Haiku Joy: Celebrating Francine Porad (founder of Haiku Northwest) [unpublished]

  • Things the Wind Says (longer poem by William Stafford)

  • Touching the Moon: Twenty-Four Shikishi (translations from Japanese)

I also have slide shows with my poetry, photography, and music, and have performed with musicians on various instruments, and often include poems by other poets for added variety. I can tailor a reading for your particular length needs and preferences, including both adult and child/youth audiences, and can also integrate readings into generative and instructional workshops.