History of Commencement Bay Haiku 2011–2021

by Richard Tice with Carmen Sterba

Carmen Sterba, Judt Shrode, and Jim Westenhaver formed a local haiku group in University Place (next to Tacoma) in 2011. Since moving from Japan in 2005, Carmen had wanted to attend a haiku group regularly, but the distance to the Port Townsend haiku group meetings and Haiku Northwest meetings in Seattle and Bellevue meant she could attend only occasionally. Michael Dylan Welch introduced haiku poets Judt and Jim to Carmen, and the three of them finally made the commitment to meet monthly. Judt came up with the name Commencement Bay Haiku, after the bay in Tacoma that holds the Port of Tacoma and is ringed with shipyards, factories, museums, restaurants, parks, and a zoo. For a little more than a year, they met at Carmen’s home before trying to find a public place for meetings. The group tried libraries for a few meetings but could not find any that did not charge a fee. By then Burk Ketcham, Julia Costineau, and Yuki Yumide, all from the Tacoma area, had found the group. For several meetings, Commencement Bay Haiku met at a Subway restaurant. That was when Richard Tice joined—the meeting in Tacoma entailed a thirty-minute drive compared to an hour drive for Haiku Northwest meetings.

By December 2013, the group found a home at King’s Books in Tacoma, right next to Commencement Bay, and met there until the pandemic shutdown began. Kathleen Tice, Alan Harvey, Janice Sakai, Megan Shea, Bill Fay, Peggy Castro, and Debbie Rivera joined during those years, and Michael came a few times for support. Meeting time finally settled on the fourth Monday at 5:00 p.m., primarily because a few members worked in the evenings but had Monday open, and a 7:00 p.m. start time meant that some would be caught in rush-hour traffic. That time has stuck, even though the reasons for it no longer apply.

In 2018 Carmen asked Richard to facilitate the group so she could step down as leader after seven years. By 2019, unfortunately for the group, Burk had moved to New York, and Megan had moved to Australia. Judt, Jim, Janice, and Yuki also were no longer able to attend. Ironically, the last face-to-face meeting in February 2020 was the largest CBH had ever had, a dozen with several attending for the first time.

For seven months the group shifted solely to email activity, until Richard organized a web meeting via a conference-call service. The next month and thereafter the group has been meeting on Zoom. Web meetings have expanded the group considerably. Aidan Castle, who moved to Tacoma, began to attend, and Michael is able to join the group often. Emily Kane, Dianne Garcia, Dorothy Matthews, and Geoff Pope, all outside the Tacoma area, join in regularly. Burk has rejoined from New York, and Geoff, who is now in Kentucky, is able to continue attending. Judith Schallberger, introduced to the group through Dorothy’s invitation, attends from San Jose, California.

Commencement Bay Haiku is a bit of a misnomer geographically and creatively. Because of Zoom, the group now ranges far beyond the bay. Its members and guests bring as much senryu and tanka as haiku, and haiga, haibun, and renku, including rengay. The meetings are mostly devoted to sharing and friendly critique of work, but they sometimes feature readings, presentations, marketing, book sharing, and writing opportunities too. It has always been a small group averaging six to twelve in attendance, at least compared to Haiku Northwest, which most of the CBH members also belong to. Some are relatively new to haiku, some are primarily artists who want to improve their writing of haiku, and some have been writing haiku for some time. Four members have been writing since the 1980s.

Ten years of existence is a milestone for Commencement Bay Haiku, and the group decided to celebrate with a ten-year anniversary anthology of members’ creative work written and shared from 2011 to 2021. The writers and artists mentioned here have poems and art in the anthology, with the exception of Yuki Yumide and Janice Sakai, whom the editors were unable to contact (Janice still has a verse in a group rengay). Unfortunately, too, the writers who started to attend recently in 2022 are not represented. Perhaps another anthology will be filled with wonderful work from our next decade. Long may they write!