Archive: Haiku Holiday
April 29, 2006

• Overview
• Presenters
• Books by Members
• Our Hosts
• Directions to Bolin Brook Farm
• Schedule

Overview

Come celebrate the 27th annual Haiku Holiday with the North Carolina Haiku Society on Saturday April 29, 2006. 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If you are going to participate in a workshop, bring previously written, unpublished haiku—or you can dash one off after the ginko (haiku walk).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.

Presenters

We are very pleased to have two very well-known haiku poets as our guest presenters: Ellen Compton and Roberta Beary.

Ellen Compton will lead one of the haiku workshops in the afternoon. Ellen, a freelance writer, is one of the founding members of towpath, a haiku group with poets in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. She is a former editor for the Red Moon Anthology, a highly-respected haiku anthology produced annually by Red Moon Press. Ellen was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, and has lived in New Orleans, Louisiana; in Caracas, Venezuela; in Troy, New York; and on a mountain top in western New Jersey. She now lives in Washington D.C. See Ellen's profile on the Millikin University Haiku Writer Profile site.

Roberta Beary recently won the Grand Prize of the 10th International Kusamakura Haiku Competition, the highlight of which was a trip to Kumamoto, Japan. She will give a talk about her experiences on the trip. (See the article A Rewarding Trip to Japan in the newsletter for the Women's National Book Association.) Roberta will also lead a haibun workshop as well. (For more about haibun, see the entry for the haibun workshop in the schedule below.)

Roberta's work appeared in A New Resonance 2, an anthology of emerging voices in haiku, edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts (2001), Winchester: Red Moon Press. She is one of 10 haiku poets featured in the Shiki online discussion list's tenth anniversary haiku anthology, which will be published in 2006. Roberta says that she is currently concentrating on haibun (haiku with prose). Some of her haibun will appear in the forthcoming Red Moon Anthology. She is a member of towpath, Haiku Ireland, Haiku International, and the Haiku Society of America.

Roberta was born in New York City and has lived in Europe and Asia. She began writing haiku in Tokyo where she lived between 1990 and 1995. She is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

NCHS member Curtis Dunlap will lead a second haiku workshop in the afternoon. 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. Curtis and Dave Russo recently started the NCHS Blog.

Lenard D. Moore, the Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society, will assist Curtis. Lenard has been writing and publishing haiku for 24 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 was recently given the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award for his contribution to the fine arts of North Carolina. He won the award for his poetry and for his tireless mentoring of other writers. The Sam Ragan award was created in 1981 to honor Samuel Talmadge Ragan, North Carolina’s first Secretary for Cultural Resources. It is presented annually to one or more persons for outstanding contributions to the fine arts of North Carolina over an extended period—including, but above and beyond—the recipient’s own primary commitment.

Lenard teaches English, world literature and humanities at Shaw University and Mount Olive College. This year, Lenard will be coming to his 24th consecutive Haiku Holiday: one each year since 1983.

Rich Krawiec will lead a reading from the Taboo Haiku anthology (2005. Avisson Press: Greensboro). An accompished novelist, short story writer, and free verse poet, Rich felt that the tone and subject matter of contemporary haiku were being artificially limited. So, he assembled an international anthology of haiku that address themes that are usually considered to be taboo in traditional haiku, such as sex, politics, and obscenity. We realize that taboo haiku are not everyone's cup of tea, so the reading will be held on the porch of the farmhouse at Bolin Brook Farm. See the NCHS blog entry about Taboo Haiku.)

Jonny Colley will play guitar as Dave and Lenard read from Wild Again, Nina Wicker's collection of haiku. Jonny has been performing in bands and as a solo acoustic singer/songwriter now for over twenty-five years. He teaches Compensatory Education at Rockingham Community College in Wentworth, NC.

NCHS webmaster Dave Russo will lead a third haiku workshop, if we find that two workshops are not enough. Dave has been writing haiku for about 10 years and has published in various haiku journals. He organizes the monthly workshops for the North Carolina Haiku Society. If you come to Dave's workshop, you can get an idea of what our monthly workshops are like. Dave, Lenard D. Moore and Bob Moyer are the local organizers for Haiku North America 2007.

Books by NCHS Members

We are pleased to feature two books by our members: Wild Again, Selected Haiku of Nina Wicker and Taboo Haiku, edited by Richard Krawiec.

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.

Directions 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 29, 2006