Archive: Haiku Holiday
April 30, 2005

Come celebrate Haiku Holiday with the North Carolina Haiku Society. Experienced haiku teachers and poets will conduct workshops, talks and walks. The event is open to anyone with an interest in haiku, beginner or advanced.

Our first Haiku Holiday took place at Bolin Brook Farm near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the United States of America on January 26, 1980. Since then, all of our annual meetings have been held at Bolin Brook Farm—thanks to our gracious host and member since the beginning, Jean Earnhardt. Our Galleries section has a few pictures from past Haiku Holidays.

If you are going to participate in a workshop, bring previously written, unpublished haiku—or you can dash one off after the ginko (haiku walk). Membership in the North Carolina Haiku Society is encouraged but not required. There is no membership or registration fee, but small donations will be gratefully accepted at the workshop. Please bring a bag lunch.

Our Presenters

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Lenard D. Moore, the Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society, will also lead a haiku workshop. Lenard has been writing and publishing haiku for 23 years. His poetry have appeared in more than 40 anthologies, including The Haiku Anthology (Norton, 1999). He is the author of Forever Home (St. Andrews College Press, 1992).

In 2003, Red Moon Press published Gathering at the Crossroads, a collaborative chapbook of Lenard's haiku about the Million Man March and Eugene B. Redmond's photographs. Lenard is a three-time recipient of the Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award (2003, 1994 and 1983). He won the Poet of the Year Award given by The Heron's Nest, for haiku written in 2004.

Lenard teaches English, world literature and humanities at Shaw University. This year, Lenard will be coming to his 23rd consecutive Haiku Holiday: one each year since 1983.

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NCHS member Ron Bell will give a talk about senyru, a kind of poem that is structurally similar to haiku, but is primarily concerned with human nature and is traditionally humorous or satiric. Ron was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey and is a resident of Hillsborough, North Carolina. In between, he lived thirty-one years in Japan where he worked at teaching, editing, book design, advertising, and psychotherapy.

Along about his twentieth year in Japan, he found himself drowning in the never-ending flow of propaganda about the Nihon no bunka, the higher reaches of Japanese culture, the sanitized view. It was a diet so rich he had to take a regular purgative in order to enjoy haiku without falling into cynicism.

In his talk on senryu, Ron will give an unpaid testimonial to the efficacy of the senryu purge for acute Nihon culturitis with symptoms of cherry blossom miasma, leading to a new appreciation of haiku.

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NCHS member Curtis Dunlap will exhibit some of his recent haiga (haiku combined with painting or other artwork). Curtis lives near the confluence of the Mayo and Dan rivers in a small NC town called Mayodan. He and his wife, Jane, have three children and one beagle. He enjoys playing guitar, reading and writing various forms of poetry and telling "home-grown" stories to his children. Curtis has been published in Frogpond, Haiga Online, The Heron's Nest and Modern Haiku. His personal haiku and related forms web site is called 'haikai from tobacco road' located at http://www.tobaccoroadpoet.com.

Our Hosts

Jean and John Earnhardt . . . Jean retired in 1995 after 20 years as a hospital PR/marketing director. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Carolina in 1952 and a Masters in Liberal Studies from Duke forty years later. While raising two sons she sold freelance features and photographs to newspapers and tried her hand at short stories and poetry. She and her husband John, also a UNC graduate, live on an old farmstead which has been in Jean's family for 12 generations. Bolin Brook has hosted the Haiku Holiday since its inception in 1980.

How to Get to Bolin Brook Farm

Bolin Brook Farm is a beautiful place, but you may need a little help in finding it. Here is Jean's address and contact information:

Jean Earnhardt
600 Bolin Brook Farm Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-929-4884
jjearn@bellsouth.net

Click this link to see a map to Bolin Brook Farm.

Click this link to see a photo of the sign you'll see on the side of the road: Photos from Haiku Holiday 2002.

Schedule for Haiku Holiday on Saturday, April 30, 2005

Spring rain and twists of fate sometimes alter the schedule, but Haiku Holiday is held rain or shine. Most of our activities are indoors anyway. Please prepare for rain, if it is in the forecast.