Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2013

Our sixth annual Haiku Northwest haiku retreat will happen in October of 2013! We'll be staying at Huckleberry, Salal, and Cedars, 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!

2013 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 10–13, 2013 (Thursday through Sunday), at the Seabeck Conference Center by the water on Washington State’s Kitsap Peninsula. Our featured speaker will be Marco Fraticelli, a former officer of Haiku Canada, publisher of King’s Road Press haiku books, and an accomplished poet with decades of experience in haiku. Only $215 (same 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 workshops, and fine haiku camaraderie. Early registration deadline: Must be postmarked by September 13, 2013 (rate increases after this date, and please also email to say you're registering if you register after September 6).

Registration Form

Click here for the 2013 retreat registration form (numerous options available, including day rates with no accommodations). Registration opens August 10, 2013, and closes October 4, 2013, with the discounted early registration deadline postmarked by September 13, 2013. Please note that these are postmark dates. Do not register before August 10.

Schedule

Events will include anonymous workshops, haiku walks, discussions, presentations, slideshows, haiku and renku writing time, and more! The schedule provides a mix of relaxation and stimulation, with plenty of breaks and variety. Click here to see the 2013 retreat schedule. Come join us!

More Photos

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

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.

2012 group photo.

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, next to a lagoon and a marina on Hood Canal, feature 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 Huckleberry and Salal, which will be our main accommodations, and at Cedars, our overflow accommodations. We'll be meeting in the Colman building (which can hold 80 people and also has its own bathrooms). For more information about the conference center, visit www.seabeck.org. Also, get an overview of the conference center by viewing the Seabeck campus map. 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 Huckleberry and Salal, with overflow in Cedars. Read more about our accommodations. These houses are close to each other near 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 2012, it's typical of accommodations at the conference center (see photos here). Click to see layout maps of Huckleberry, Salal, and Cedars. 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 the Seabeck 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 youmight need an umbrella and a rain jacket for one of our haiku walks. Make sure to bring a flashlight and a bathrobe (some rooms in Cedars have a shared bathroom down the hall), and perhaps earplugs (if 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. Click to see the first of many photos showing our 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 retreat name tags. 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 keepsake 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 (we’ll let you know if attendance exceeds 40, which happened in 2012). For 2013 we'll plan to have a special reading from these sheets.

Show and Tell

[Not happening in 2013] 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

[Not happening in 2013] Our "Favorite Haiku" session is always popular. 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 has been 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 another new anthology for our 2013 retreat, collecting poems written or shared at the retreat. Click here for a description of our 2009 retreat publications (shown here).

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. In 2013, the Haiga Adventure Study Group of Puget Sound Sumi Artists will once again stage a haiga exhibit in the dining hall and parts of our meeting space. This has been a wonderful way to show haiku and haiga to other conference attendees also present at Seabeck during our weekend retreat.

[The following is not happening in 2013] We 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 Angela Terry or Michael Dylan Welch in the lobby of the Historic Inn or the Colman building (see campus map). On Saturday or Sunday, please register at the Colman building. Please arrive by the following times, depending on the day:

  • Thursday, October 10: Please arrive and register before dinner, which starts at 6:00 p.m.

  • Friday, October 11: Please arrive and register before dinner, which starts at 6:30 p.m. (half an hour later than usual on Friday only)

  • Saturday, October 12: 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 13: 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 2013 registration form.

See you in Seabeck!