Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2011

Our fourth annual Haiku Northwest haiku retreat will happen in October of 2011! We'll be staying at The Firs, Spruce, Cedars, and Madrona, across the lagoon from Hood Canal at the Seabeck Conference Center—hope you’ll join us! And yes, those are the Olympic Mountains in the distance!

2011 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 13–16, 2011 (Thursday through Sunday), at the Seabeck Conference Center by the water on Washington State’s Kitsap Peninsula. Our featured speaker will be John Stevenson, managing editor of The Heron’s Nest. Only $199 (same price as the previous year) for a long 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: Must be postmarked by September 7, 2011.

Registration Form

Click here for the 2011 retreat registration form (numerous options available, including day rates with no accommodations). Registration opens August 8, 2011, and closes October 7, 2011, with the discounted early registration deadline postmarked by September 7, 2011. Please note that these are postmark dates. Do not register before August 8.

Schedule

Events will include anonymous workshops, haiku walks, discussions, presentations, slideshows, a rengay workshop, haiku and renku writing time, and more! The schedule is also more relaxed this year (more/longer breaks). Click here to see the 2011 retreat schedule. Come join us!

Photos and More

Click here to see photos of Seabeck conference facilities and nearby attractions. For photos of our previous retreats, click the following options:

To see Debbie Kolodji's pictures of the 2009 retreat, click here. To see a delightful short video of 2009 attendees reading their haiku, click here. And read Penny Harter's report of attending the 2009 retreat (with links to additional photos and reports of the retreat), in which she says "The Seabeck Haiku Getaway was among the most enjoyable haiku events I’ve attended." And see a photo and description of the three publications produced to commemorate the 2009 retreat.

2011 group photo.

2010 group photo.

2009 group photo.

2008 group photo.

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), nearly two hours if you take the Seattle-to-Bremerton ferry (about 33 driving miles), or 90 minutes if you take the Seattle-to-Bainbridge ferry (about 40 driving miles). For our haiku retreat, we’ll be staying at The Firs, Spruce, and Cedars, which will house our main accommodations, and at Madrona House, our overflow accommodations. We'll be meeting in the Colman building (which can hold 80 people and also has its own bathrooms) as well as in The Firs and Spruce. For more information about the conference center, visit www.seabeck.org. Also, http://www.seabeck.org/campus%20map.html 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.

Accommodations

We'll be staying primarily in The Firs, Spruce, and Cedars, with overflow in Madrona. Read more about our accommodations. These four houses are mostly right next to each other beside the Historic Inn and our dining hall. Our meeting hall, the Colman building, is just up the hill (photo above). Previously, we stayed in Reeser House, and although we won't be using it for 2011, it's typical of accommodations at the conference center (see photos here). Click to see layout maps of The Firs, Spruce, Cedars, and Madrona. If necessary for additional overflow, we should be able to arrange other housing facilities on the conference grounds with more beds. Click to see photos of our accommodations (scroll down), or click to see an interactive campus map.

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. Make sure to bring a flashlight and a bathrobe (most accommodations have a shared bathroom down the hall), and perhaps earplugs (in your roommate snores). 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, and they have a superb salad bar. 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. To see the first of many photos showing our 2009 and 2010 retreat name tags, click here and click here. Top these!

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 40 copies to share with everyone present. For 2011, we'll plan to have a special reading from these sheets.

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.

Favorite Haiku Session

Returning again for 2011 is our "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.

We'll be meeting in the Colman Building, shown here.

Retreat Anthology

A big hit for our previous retreats was the publication of haiku collections to commemorate the weekend, including hand-sewn chapbooks. Our 2009 anthology, Seeing Stars, even won the "Best Anthology" award in 2010 in the Haiku Society of America's Kanterman Book Awards (for books published in 2009). We'll do at least one anthology for our 2011 retreat, collecting poems written or shared at the retreat. Click here for a description of our 2009 retreat publications (shown above).

Haiga Exhibit

Please bring copies of any haiga or photo-haiga (framed or unframed) that you'd like to display. Please note that we cannot hang them on the walls, but can place them flat on tables for easy viewing. We will also do a slide show of haiga using a digital projector, so please bring some of your haiga in electronic form on a USB flash drive, CD, or in another format. For more information about haiga, click here.

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.

Arrival

Upon your arrival on Thursday or Friday, please register with Tanya or Michael in the lobby of the Historic Inn or the Colman building (see interactive campus map). On Saturday or Sunday, please register at the Colman building. Please arrive by the following times, depending on the day:

  • Thursday, October 13: Please arrive and register before dinner, which starts at 6:00 p.m.

  • Friday, October 14: Please arrive and register before dinner, which starts at 6:30 p.m. (half an hour later than usual on Friday only)

  • Saturday, October 15: For day visitors, please arrive and register at 9:00 a.m. (Colman building). If you can't arrive by 9:00 a.m., please join us when you can.

  • Sunday, October 16: For day visitors, please arrive and register at 9:00 a.m. (Colman building).

Questions

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

Seabeck Haiku Retreat Registration Form

Click here for the 2011 registration form.

See you in Seabeck!