International Haiku Spring Festival 2010 (Akita, Northern Honshu, Japan)

 

Akita International Haiku / Senryu / Tanka Network, whose website is Akita International Haiku Network, was established in Akita, Northern Honshu, Japan, in May, 2009.

 We established this Network, with the motto, “We all try our best / in our busy, busy lives / to write poetry.”  We opened the website in the hope that children as well as adults will write and enjoy haiku, senryu and tanka, and that they will share it on our network.

 

Our webmaster, Thorfinn Tait, opened the Akita International Haiku Network in May, 2009.

 

He is a  teacher of English at Meioh High School in Akita.

He graduated from Edinburgh University in UK, where he majored in linguistics and learned Japanese.

 

 

 

He says in our yearly pamphlet as follows:

In May, I set up a website for the Network at Mr Hiruta’s request, using a free WordPress blog at wordpress.com. Recently blog software has become popular for producing all kinds of pages, and it seems particularly well-suited to our network.

As a result, the Network’s website has now been up and running for a year. Mr Hiruta has been posting haiku and articles contributed from poets inside and outside of Japan there on a weekly basis. If you haven’t already done so, please check out the web site at the address above.

I think we have an excellent opportunity to make the Akita International Haiku Network truly international and promote traditional Japanese forms of poetry around the world through our website. I hope you will all lend a hand to make the website a success.

 In celebration of the 1st anniversary of the opening of our network, we hold International Haiku Spring Festival 2010 (Akita, Northern Honshu, Japan).

This festival is presented in Partnership with 2010 Bath Japanese Festival.

 

Please check out the Bath Japanese festival at http://sites.google.com/site/bathjapanesefestival/welcome/.

 

Let’s share haiku!     Let’s share haibun!

Let’s share senryu!    Let’s share tanka! 

・What is it?

 It is an online festival designed to give our readers an opportunity to share the Japanese short forms of poetry with each other, and enjoy writing and reading haiku, senryu, or tanka.   

 

 ・When is it? 

We are happy to announce that the Festival with run from May 12^th – 23^rd 2010.  

 

・Where is it?

On the website of Akita International Haiku Network

 

・How do I get involved?

Please give us a comment on this site, saying that I would like to send my haiku, senryu, tanka, or haibun.

You will receive an e-mail from Hidenori Hiruta with his e-mail address.

We sincerely hope that you will enjoy our online festival on the Internet.

 

Last of all, let me show you part of how we have shared our poetic activities with our readers.

On July, 2009, a British haiku poet, John McDonald, gave us a comment on Basho’s peach blossoms posted on June 14, 2009.

Since then Mr. McDonald has given us a comment and encouraged us to continue posting haiku and articles on the website.

He also contributed his haiku book, whose title is THE THROU-GAUN CHIEL scots haiku, to me.

I posted part of his haiku in Scots as well as in English with my Japanese translation.

Scots haiku by Mr. McDonald ( Part 1) was posted on September 5, 2009 and Part 2 of his Scots haiku was posted on October 17, 2009.

 

 

In January, 2010, Mr. McDonald published his haiku booklet, whose front cover is shown as follows:

I also show part of his booklet.

 

 

Mr. McDonald sent the following e-mail to me.

 Dear Hiruta San,

thank you most kindly for the translations, since there are others coming on sat. I’ll wait until then to collate the whole thing. This is just a small desktop effort by myself a copy for ourselves and then I’d like to send a copy to the scottish poetry library – this is a library we in scotland built a number of years ago a lovely modern building to house purely poetry from, as well as scottish writers, poets from all over the world so I felt this would be an archives where the two of us could sit forever (or as long as the building exists).hope my plan works out. Once I get saturdays translations I’ll set it up and hopefully get a copy off to you next week. thanks again

aye    john

This is how we have enjoyed sharing the poetic works with each other.

We sincerely hope that you will share poetic works with us through International Haiku Spring Festival 2010.

 

― Hidenori Hiruta