Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2009

Annual Haiku Northwest Retreat

Haiku, haiku, and more haiku . . . and maybe a wee bit of socializing! Join the Haiku Northwest group on the weekend of October 16, 17, and 18, 2009, at the Seabeck Conference Center by the water on Washington State’s Kitsap Peninsula. Speakers include poet Penny Harter, coming from New Jersey, Christopher Herold leading a renku session, Debbie Kolodji from Southern California, Ce Rosenow from Oregon, Richard Tice, Michael Dylan Welch, and others. Only $159 for a full weekend of meals, accommodations, and all the haiku you can carry! Enjoy the lagoon, waterfront, woods, mountain views, stimulating presentations, and fine haiku camaraderie. Early registration deadline: Postmarked by September 7, 2009.

Registration Form

Click here for the retreat registration form.

Photos

Click Seabeck Photos here to see photos of Seabeck conference facilities and nearby attractions. For photos of our 2008 retreat (held October 10, 11, and 12), click here.

Schedule

Events will include anonymous workshops, haiku walks, discussions, presentations, slideshows, a repeat of the popular haiku show and tell session, a favorite haiku session, haiku and renku writing time, and more! Click here to see the retreat schedule.

Conference Center Location

The Seabeck Conference Center is a warm and rustic getaway retreat center located at 13395 Seabeck Highway NW, in Seabeck, Washington. The wooded conference grounds are next to a lagoon and a marina on Hood Canal, with lovely views across the tidal water to the Olympic Mountains. Many of the facility’s accommodations are historic or relocated heritage houses. Traveling from Seattle to Seabeck takes about 90 minutes (about 80 miles) via Tacoma (toll to cross the bridge southbound only), or nearly two hours if you take the Seattle-to-Bremerton ferry (about 33 driving miles). For our haiku retreat, we’ll be staying at Reeser House, which will house all our accommodations and at The Firs and at Madrona House, our overflow accommodations. We'll be meeting in The Lounge (a new facility for us in 2009) as well as in Reeser House. For more information about the conference center, visit www.seabeck.org. Also, https://www.seabeck.org/campus-map shows a map of the conference center. If it’s necessary for you to contact the conference center, their phone number is 360-830-5010, but please note that the conference center does not handle our retreat reservations.

Reeser House

This three-story house was built in Silverdale in 1914 and relocated to Seabeck in 1988 (see photos here or see cushy interior photos here [link no longer works]). It has eight sleeping rooms with single or double beds for a total of 15 beds. The building has four bathrooms. One room on the second floor has a double bed and private bathroom. The building features two carpeted meeting rooms (where we’ll hold some of our meetings) with the first-floor room holding 30 participants and the second-floor area holding 15 people (with some kitchen facilities). For a room layout map of Reeser House, click here. If we fill Reeser House, we have an overflow option in The Firs and in Madrona, other housing facilities on the conference grounds with additional beds (click to see room layout maps).

What to Bring

All bed linens and towels are provided (supplied once for the whole weekend). Please bring clothes for both warm and rainy weather. We’ve planned to have perfectly sunny skies, but you never know if you might need an umbrella and a rain jacket for one of our haiku walks. Please bring haiku for round-robin readings. Please also bring your haiku notebook and lots of creativity and enthusiasm. And while you’re at it, bring some poet friends, too!

Meals

All meals are served family-style at the Seabeck Conference Center dining hall. Vegetarian and nonvegetarian options are available at every meal. If you have additional dietary or allergy concerns, please let us know when you register.

Name Tags

Be creative in making your own name tag. No vote or prize on the best ones this year, but please do make your own name tag in a creative way.

Silent Auction

If you’re willing to donate items for our silent auction, you’ll help us raise money to offset expenses. Books are welcome, but you don’t need to limit yourself to books (items don’t have to be haiku-related, either, but do make them of interest to fellow haiku poets).

Book Fair

Have haiku books for sale or trade? If so, please bring them to sell on our book table. Please price your books and indicate who should be paid for purchases.

Haiku Sheets

As a special way to commemorate the weekend, we invite you to create a trifold haiku sheet (or something similar) with a selection of your haiku or senryu, whether recent poems or best-of selections. Please make up to 30 copies to share with everyone present.

Show and Tell

Remember show-and-tell from grade school? Back by popular demand, we’ll have another haiku show-and-tell session! If you want to participate (it’s optional), bring anything related to haiku to show and describe to the group. You could read a long poem that relates to haiku, or show a favorite book or photograph. A haiga? A doormat with a haiku printed on it? Something odd or amusing? Use your creativity and imagination to bring something (or several things!) to stimulate our thinking about haiku.

Show and Tell

New for 2009 is what we'd like to call a “Favorite Haiku” session. If you want to participate (it’s optional), please select a favorite haiku or senryu written by someone else, and come prepared to read that poem and speak appreciatively for two or three minutes about why the poem works for you. You could write out your remarks and read them to the group or talk extemporaneously—it’s up to you! We hope this session will engage everyone, stimulate some critical thinking, and introduce us to new poems, whether classics that are good to be reminded of or highly personal poems that few of us know.

Shuttle

If you need transportation from the Seattle airport to the conference center, please let us know. Or contact www.kitsapairporter.com for shuttle details (phone 360-876-1737 or 800-562-7948). Contact Kitsap Airporter for prices.

Questions

If you have questions, please contact the conference organizers or visit the following websites:

Michael Dylan Welch: welchm@aol.com / 206-240-0871 or 425-836-8875

Tanya McDonald: tanyamcdonald1375@yahoo.com / 541-740-2467

Seabeck Conference Center: www.seabeck.org

Seabeck Conference Center map: https://www.seabeck.org/campus-map

Reeser House layout map: click here

Firs layout map: click here

Madrona House layout map: click here

Seabeck Weather Report: click here

Seabeck Haiku Retreat Registration Form

Click here for the registration form.

See you in Seabeck!