Global
Haiku Festival
April
14-16, 2000
Decatur, Illinois
Speaker
& Artist Biographies
Bertrand
Agostini
Bertrand
Agostini holds a PhD in American Literature. His doctoral
thesis was on the notion of suffering in the novels of Jack
Kerouac. He is an Associate Professor of English at Ecole
Superieure d'Agriculture and Universite Catholique de l'Ouest
in Angers, France. His current position for this academic
year is: Visiting Associate Professor of Languages at Clemson
University, South Carolina. He has written several articles
in English and French on Jack Kerouac. In 1998 he co-authored
(with Christiane Pajotin) a book on Jack Kerouac's haiku:
Itinéraire dans l'errance:
Kerouac et le haïku.
(A Wandering Itinerary: Kerouac and the Haiku).
Gretchen
Batz
Gretchen
Batz is a professional photographer and haiku writer from
Elsah, Illinois. She enjoys the challenge of combining poetry
and photography.
Randy Brooks
Co-chair
of the Global Haiku Festival, Dr. Randy Brooks directs the
writing major at Millikin. He currently teaches two courses
on haiku at Millikin University. He and his wife, Shirley
Brooks, have been co-editors and publishers of Brooks Books
(formerly High/Coo Press) since 1976 and currently edit
Mayfly a haiku magazine.
His selected haiku, School's Out,
was recently published by Press Here. Brooks also edits
the English Language Haiku web site: http://www.family-net.net/~brooksbooks
David Cobb
A founding
member and president of the British Haiku Society, David
Cobb lives in Braintree, Essex, England. Cobb is known as
an innovator in haiku set to music and in the development
of haibun in English. In 1995 he celebrated haiku at the
Keats House Museum with several haiku music performances
including Cobb's haiku series, "The Lilting Dove."
In 1997 his literary haibun, The
Spring Journey to the Saxon Shore, was published.
Three additional collections of his haiku have been published
including Jumping from
Kiyomizu, Mounting Shadows,
and A Leap in the Light.
Dan Guillory
Our
Midwest literary culture tour
guide, Dan Guillory, is a professor of English at Millikin
University. He is also an award-winning writer and scholar
of Midwestern literature and culture. He is the author of
Living With Lincoln: Life and Art
in the Heartland published in 1989 and When
Waters Recede: Rescue and Recovery During the Great Flood
published in 1996. A collection of poems, Alligator
Inventions, was published in 1993.
Lee Gurga
Co-chair
of the Global Haiku Festival, Lee Gurga is a small town
dentist in Lincoln, Illinois. In 1997 he served as president
of the Haiku Society of America, and he has been organizing
international haiku events for several years. He is currently
associate editor of Modern Haiku,
the longest-running journal of haiku and haiku studies outside
of Japan. He is also haiku selector for the Illinios
Times newspaper. Dr. Gurga has received numerous
haiku awards including the prestigious First Place Merit
Book Award from the Haiku Society of America for the best
book of English-language haiku published in 1997, In
and Out of Fog and again in 1998 for Fresh
Scent: Selected Haiku of Lee Gurga. Working with
Emiko Miyashita, Gurga has recently been translating haiku
by leading contemporary Japanese writers with their first
published work being Love
Haiku: Masajo Suzuki's Lifetime of Love.
Yoshinobu
Hakutani
Yoshinobu
Hakutani was born in Osaka, Japan. He grew up and went to
public schools on Awaji Island near Kobe. He studied at
Hiroshima University for his B.A. in English. He came to
the United States in 1956 to study a year at Indiana University
of Pennsylvania, and took an M.A. in English at the University
of Minnesota in 1959. He taught at South Dakota State University
for two years and received a Ph.D. in English at Penn State
in 1965. From 1965 to 1968 he was Assistant Professor of
English at California State University at Northridge. Since
1968 Hakutani has been teaching American literature at Kent
State University in Ohio. Professor of English since 1979,
he has written on American literature and other subjects.
Among his books are Richard Wright
and Racial Discourse; Critical
Essays on Richard Wright (editor); Selected
English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East-West Literary
Assimilation (editor); and Richard Wright, Haiku:
This Other World (co-editor), named as the top
selection for the 1999 National Poetry Month by the Academy
of American Poets.
William
J. Higginson
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.
Jim Kacian
Jim
Kacian is a writer, publisher and tennis professional who
lives near the Shenandoah River in Virginia. He is the author
of five books of haiku including Presents
of Mind, Chinoteague,
Six Directions, In Concert and
Out of Stones: Selected Haiku of Jim Kacian.
He is owner and editor of Red Moon Press, a leading publisher
of English-language haiku books, and he is editor-in-chief
for the Red Moon Haiku Anthology
series which gather selected best haiku published each year.
He also serves as editor of Frogpond,
the official magazine of the Haiku Society of America.
David Lanoue
David
Lanoue is Professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Since 1984 he his original haiku, translations, and essays
have been published in various magazines. In 1988 he studied
Japanese language and literature at Sophia University in
Tokyo, and he participated in the N.E.H. Literary Translation
Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz in
1989. His book, Issa: Cup-of-Tea
Poems; Selected Haiku of Kobayashi Issa was published
in 1991. A collection of his own haiku and prose, Haiku
Guy, was recently published.
Horst Ludwig
Horst
Ludwig is an Associate Professor of German at Gustavus Aldolphus
College in St. Peter, Minnesota. He has lived in Minnesota
for 30 years. He writes haiku in German and is a member
of the German Haiku Society. He has studied haiku and Japanese
cultural influences on German culture including the history
of haiku in Germany.
John Martone
John
Martone is a professor of English at Eastern Illinois University
in Charleston, Illinois. He is the publisher of Tel-let
Press and writer of short poetry including haiku.
Emiko Miyashita
Emiko
Miyashita studied English literature at Doshisha University
in Kyoto. She lives in Kawasaki, Japan where she and her
husband operate an arts and antiques business. She is Dojin
(a senior member) of Ten'i, a haiku group lead by Dr. Akito
Arima. Dr. Arima is currently the Minister of Science in
the Japanese Diet. She is also a member of Haiku International
Association, Haiku Society of America and editor of Lynne
Okazaki Art Press. She has been an active participant in
the internationalization of haiku, collaborating on translations
of contemporary Japanese haiku with Lee Gurga, especially
haiku by Akito Arima and Masajo Suzuki.
Peter Mortimer
Peter
Mortimer is a British poet, playwright, and the publisher
of IRON Press, one of the leading small press publishers
of British haiku books. His new play "Clockman"
is due for production this Spring, and his most recent book
is Broke Through Britain-One Man's
Penniless Odyssey. Iron Press was formed in 1973,
initially to publish the magazine IRON and now offers an
extensive list of books including The
Haiku Hundred, Jumping
From Kiyomizu by David Cobb, Cloud
Blunt Moon by Chris Mulhern, and Global
Haiku: Twenty-five Outstanding Poets.
Ban'ya
Natsuishi
Professor
Masayuki Inue, Department of Law at Meiji University in
Tokyo, is known in the haiku community as "Ban'ya Natsuishi."
An internationally acclaimed avant-garde haiku poet, Ban'ya
Natsuishi is the Chief of External Liason of the 7,000 member
Gendai Haiku Kyôkai (Modern Haiku Association) in
Japan. He is the editor-in-chief of the haiku magazine Gin-yu
(Troubadour).
He has numerous haiku publications including the recently
published English-language edition, A
Future Waterfall: 100 Haiku from the Japanese.
Lidia Rozmus
Lidia
Rozmus was born and reared in Poland and studied art at
the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the Art Institute
of Chicago. Living in the United States since 1980, she
works as a graphic designer, paints sumi-e, and writes haiku.
Her haiga have been exhibited in the United States, Poland
and Japan. A member of the Haiku Society of America since
1992, she has been active in international haiku conferences
and collaborated with several haiku writers on haiku publications.
John Stevenson
John
Stevenson is the president of the Haiku Society of America.
A member since 1993, he has served as a judge for its Harold
G. Henderson Awards for haiku and Gerald Brady Awards for
senryu and as editor of the HSA Members' Anthology of 1997.
John is from Ithaca, NY and currently lives near Albany,
NY where he is employed as an administrator for the New
York State Office of Mental Health.
George
Swede
George
Swede is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology
and the School of Justice Studies at Ryerson Polytechnic
University in Toronto, Canada. He has published 16 books
of haiku and edited 8 collections including Global
Haiku: Twenty-five Outstanding Poets. His most
recent book is a clothbound edition of his selected haiku:
Almost Unseen. In 1977,
together with Eric Amann and Betty Drevniok, he co-founded
Haiku Canada.
Yoshiko
Yoshino
Leader
of the Hoshi (Star) haiku group and editor of Hoshi
magazine, Yoshiko Yoshino, has been an award-winning haiku
poet and a promoter of international haiku for several decades.
She is an active member of the Haikuists' Association, the
Haiku International Association, the Haiku Association,
the Haiku Association of Ehime Prefecture, the Haiku Association
of Matsuyama City and the International Haiku Salon at the
International and Tourism Section of Ehime Prefecture.
Ikuyo Yoshimura
Ikuyo
Yoshimura is a poet, translator and biographer of R.H.Blyth
and James W. Hackett. An associate professor of English
at Asahi University in Gifu, she has been a member of Japan
Contemporary Anglo-American Poetry Society and the Historical
Society of English Studies in Japan. Her recent publications
are At the Riverside
(Haiku in English), Spring Thunder,
A Renaissance of the Works of R.H.Blyth, and
The life of R.H.Blyth.
She has published numerous articles on haiku in English.
Her poems often appear in Frogpond
(U.S.A.), Haiku Quarterly
(U.K.), Blithe Spirit
(U.K.) and Haiku Headlines
(U.S.A.). She is a member of the Evergreen Haiku Association
in Gifu.
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