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Editor:  wordfield

Name:	William J. Higginson
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Home Page:	http://www.2hweb.net
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Arts: Literature: Poetry: Forms: Fixed Verse Forms: Sijo  (5)
Arts: Literature: Poetry: Forms: Haiku and Related Forms  (255)

Profile

I have been a student of Japanese haiku since the early 1960s, and of haiku's influence on modernist poetry and the internationalization of haiku since 1967. My first translations of Japanese haiku were published in a small book in 1968, and since then I have been an active member of the "haiku community" in North America. I was a founding member of the Haiku Society of America in 1968 and served as its president in 1976. From 1971 to 1976 I edited Haiku Magazine, and I founded From Here Press, literary publishers, in 1975. The press has published a range of poetry, including modern American poetry by Ruth Stone, Penny Harter, and myself, but has haiku as its core. We have published chapbooks of haiku and related work by Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Penny Harter, Adele Kenny, and Rod Tulloss, as well as translations from Japanese. Our book, Red Fuji: Selected Haiku of Yatsuka Ishihara, features the work of one of Japan's leading 20th century haiku masters, translated by Tadashi Kondo and myself with an introduction to his life and thought by Kristen Deming.

Since my book The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku was published by McGraw-Hill in 1985, I have been invited to Japan a number of times, and have given keynote addresses, academic papers, and participated in panels of experts and judges in conferences and workshops at Tokyo, Yamagata, Matsuyama, and Osaka. I was also fortunate enough on some of these trips to practice renku (Basho-style linked poetry) with groups led by Master Ryukan Miyoshi of the Jigensha Renkukai and Master Meiga Higashi of the Nekomino Renkukai, among others.

In 1996 a ten-year project culminated in the publication of my books The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World and Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, both from Kodansha International. The former presents the history of nature as used in Japanese poetry for the last millennium or more; the latter is an anthology of 1000+ haiku and related verses from 50 countries, organized in the manner of a traditional Japanese season-word guide. Second editions of both books are scheduled for publication from Stone Bridge Press in 2008.

My current work involves studying the sources of depth in haiku and surveying the Internet as a context for haiku publication and discussion.