American Haiku Archives Events
The American Haiku Archives advisory board occasionally sponsors special events at the California State Library, usually including a private tour of the haiku collections. These events have often been in conjunction with visits to Sacramento by American Haiku Archives honorary curators, or by other prominent haiku poets, scholars, or translators from the United States, Canada, Japan, or elsewhere. If you’ll be visiting and might be interested in a special tour of the archives, or want to know if any events might be happening soon (if not listed here), please contact the American Haiku Archives advisory board.
photograph by Stanford M. Forrester
A national quarterly meeting of the Haiku Society of America also took place in Sacramento in June of 2006, and activities for the weekend included a tour of the archives.
Events
The American Haiku Archives (home of the official Haiku Society of America archives) is pleased to share two videos on YouTube, each a little less than an hour long. The first one, at https://youtu.be/glBueeCFXW0, celebrates Lenard D. Moore as the 2020-21 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives. The second video, at https://youtu.be/8vpeiH3JCkE, shares "Your Haiku Archives," a PowerPoint presentation by Michael Dylan Welch on the formation and history of the American Haiku Archives, complete with photos and poems of all honorary curators from 1996 to 2020. These Zoom videos were both recorded on 2 August 2020. Thank you to Ignatius Fay for his assistance in processing these videos.
American Haiku Archives 2020 Honorary Curator Reading
August 2, 2020, 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time (US and Canada)
To celebrate the appointment of Lenard D. Moore as the twenty-fourth honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives, we had a Zoom reading on Sunday, August 2, 2020. This free online event, the first in the history of the American Haiku Archives, included the following activities:
- Welcome, by Michael Dylan Welch
- Haiku reading by members of the American Haiku Archives Advisory Board
- Greetings from the California State Library
- Introduction of the 2020–21 AHA Honorary Curator, by Ce Rosenow
- Haiku reading by Lenard D. Moore
- PowerPoint presentation on the history of the American Haiku Archives and its previous honorary curators, by Michael Dylan Welch
- Closing Q&A session and socializing
Introduction for Lenard D. Moore’s Induction as the Honorary Curator of the American Haiku Archives:
August 2, 2020
by Ce Rosenow
I am so pleased to be able to introduce Lenard D. Moore as the new honorary curator. Over the decades, I’ve had the privilege of publishing Lenard’s poetry, first in Northwest Literary Forum and later reissuing his book of haiku, The Open Eye, and publishing his poetry collection The Geography of Jazz, both from Mountains and Rivers Press. I’m also especially thankful to call him my friend. That said, trying to introduce someone with Lenard’s accomplishments in a short amount of time is really a challenge! But I’m going to try.
Lenard D. Moore is an internationally acclaimed poet whose poems have appeared in haiku and nonhaiku journals across the United States and abroad and in more than one hundred anthologies. He is the author of several books, including: A Temple Looming, Desert Storm: A Brief History, Forever Home, The Open Eye, and The Geography of Jazz. In addition to his poetry, Lenard’s fiction, essays, book reviews, and photography have appeared in print and online. He has also edited many anthologies including most recently One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku and All the Songs We Sing: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective. Additionally, Lenard is the founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and the cofounder of Washington Street Writers Group. We all know that he has been a leader in the English-language haiku community for decades, serving as the president of the Haiku Society of America in 2008 and 2009, and continuing to this day his longtime service as the executive chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society.
Reviewing Lenard’s long career as a poet, we find him returning often to the subjects of family and ancestry, spirituality, and grief. We also see a sustained interest in haiku and related forms, including his work with extended haiku sequences, a wide variety of other poetic forms, and a special emphasis on ekphrastic poetry. In fact, Lenard’s participation in two choirs, his passion for gospel music and jazz, and his interest in writing poems in response to works of art have led to many fine haiku and other poems about gospel and jazz music.
Lenard has also read, and it might better be said performed, his poetry with several musicians in many locations around the country; and, if you’ve ever had the opportunity to witness one of these performances, you know exactly how powerful they are. For instance, he performed with the jazz combo R.S.V.P; with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist J. D. Parran, and bassist Mark Deutsch. He also performed with bassist Chris Sullivan; with the Joel Dias-Porter Quintet; and with the Matt Kendrick Trio, to name a few. It is small wonder that his poetry, including his haiku, has such musicality and rhythm.
Finally, over Lenard’s prestigious career, he has received numerous awards. Just a few of these awards are the 2019 North Carolina Black History Month Honoree presented by Govenor Roy Cooper; the North Carolina Award for Literature; the Raleigh Medal of the Arts for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts; the Museum of Haiku Literature Award three times; the Tar Heel of the Week Award; the Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award; and the Indies Arts Award. He was also named Eastern North Carolina Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet in 2008 and 2009.
I cannot think of a better 2020–2021 honorary curator for the American Haiku Archives. Please welcome Lenard D. Moore, who will now read some of his poems.
Past events
Shikishi Exhibit, November 2017-April 2018
The American Haiku Archives and the California State Library in Sacramento hosted a gallery showing at the library of "Twenty Four Shikishi," featuring decorative poem cards with calligraphy and paintings by 24 of Japan's leading haiku poets. These shikishi were given to the Haiku Society of America in New York City in 1978 to celebrate the society's 10th anniversary, and were exhibited in celebration of the society's 50th anniversary.
Alex Vassar put together an online exhibit of these shikishi with Google Arts & Culture. Here is a link to that exhibit, the Shikishi Haiku.
Michael Dylan Welch has two related exhibits at the Graceguts website: Touching the Moon: Twenty-Four Shikishi and Photos from the September 1978 Haiku Society of America Meeting.
American Haiku Archives Tour, April 9, 2011
People interested in haiku and the American Haiku Archives came to a free tour of the archives on Saturday, April 9, 2011. Participants got a special tour of archived haiku materials usually not accessible to the public. They saw some of the Tokutomi papers as well as other papers, such as those of Jerry Kilbride, Kay Anderson, and Elizabeth Searle Lamb. They also learned about the process involved in archiving and cataloguing material.
Special online exhibit featuring donors Kiyoko & Kiyoshi Tokutomi.
Visit by Prof. Masahisa (Shinku) Fukuda from Japan. September 9, 1998 – See the invitation.
Events Archive Plan
A list of past events will be added as we can compile them. These events have included visits to the archives by Gary Snyder, Makoto Ueda, Shinku Fukuda, Cor van den Heuvel, William J. Higginson, Penny Harter, advisory board members, and many others. Each of these events has included a tour of the archives, and a couple of events have included receptions or dinners hosted at the library by Dr. Kevin Starr.
