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 The
keynote address was open to the public and was delivered
in the East Room of the Richards Treat University Center
at Millikin University. Mr. Higginson spoke on the history
and growth of an international haiku community.
European
poets of the early 20th century viewed haiku as an aid to
clarifying a new poetic. Lee Gurga has touched on the leap
from this to the beginnings of what might be called a "haiku
consciousness" in North America starting with the works
of R. H. Blyth, Harold G. Henderson, and the Beat poets.
In this address, Higginson will focus our attention on the
history of what we have come to call "the haiku community"--at
first growing in North America and among a few individuals
in Europe beginning in the late 1950s and early 60s, expanding
to incorporate pockets in England and Australia in the 1970s,
and becoming truly global in the 1980s and 90s: the reason
for this conference and for the book we were all celebrating.
In this
connection, Higginson examined both the external contexts
in which the haiku movement grew and the directions and
vitality of that growth. Then he also took a serious look
at the non-haiku or pseudo-haiku that have flourished in
the last decade, particularly with the advent of the Internet,
and considered how their growth and "appreciation"
have or have not altered the situation of our haiku community.
He also examined some other trends that are shaping up both
inside and outside of the haiku community during the decade
now ending, and where he thinks they are likely to go in
the near future.
Finally,
Higginson offered a vision of where our global haiku community
might best place its energies in the next decade, as population
growth, political and economic tensions, and the permeation
of modern society by technology continue to dominate-and
radically alter-the lives of most people around this globe.
William
J. Higginson & Penny Harter on Millikin Campus
William
J. Higginson is a poet, translator, and writing teacher.
His historical-critical writings on haiku are found in haiku
magazines around the globe and in his books: The
Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku,
The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World, and
Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac.
He has authored or edited over twenty books, including collections
of his poems and essays and anthologies of writing by others.
In 1975 he established From Here Press, and has published
works by Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Stone, Penny Harter, Elizabeth
Searle Lamb, Alan Pizzarelli, Adele Kenny, and others. He
is an editor of the "Haiku and Related Forms"
category on the Netscape Open Directory Project on the Internet.
He has worked as a consultant in writing and the teaching
of writing for almost thirty years, and many of his articles
on teaching writing appear in publications of Teachers &
Writers Collaborative.
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