Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2024 Schedule

Welcome to Seabeck!

We’ve developed a great schedule for you at the 2024 Seabeck Haiku Getaway! Our weekend theme is “maps,” and our featured guest is Crystal Simone Smith, visiting from Durham, North Carolina, who will give several featured presentations and workshops. Other events include writing workshops, anonymous critique sessions, readings, presentations, haiku writing time, a panel discussion, and more. Write Now sessions are brief haiku writing exercises, and we’ll have four of them this weekend (relating to our weekend them of maps), where we invite you to write spontaneously. All events take place in the Pines building unless indicated otherwise, with meals at the dining hall. Fall colors will be vibrant, too! If you have silent auction or book fair items to set up, you can do so at any time. Please also prepare a haiku handout or trifold to share with about 65 attendees (optional). See you at Seabeck!

• • Visit our 2024 registration page

  • Visit our 2024 general information page

  • Visit Seabeck Details (everything else you need to know—important stuff)

  • Learn about Getting to Seabeck (ask us if you need travel advice)

On display all weekend in the Pines building (upstairs):

• • “Haiga Adventure” artwork by members of the Haiga Adventure Study Group of Puget Sound Sumi Artists, coordinated by Dorothy Matthews

  • Bring a favorite map of your own for display (for example, a map of your hometown)

  • Plus your own haiga or other haiku-related artwork if you have any to show

Weekend theme: Maps

TRAVEL NOTE: Speaking of maps, please see information about a temporary road closure that will affect access to Seabeck this year. For more information, please visit the Getting to Seabeck page and look for the road closure heading—and a map showing alternate routes.

The following schedule is subject to minor revision.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

4:00 p.m.         Check in starts at the Historic Inn

6:00 p.m.         Dinner

7:00 p.m.         Welcome by Michael Dylan Welch

7:30 p.m.         “Seabeck Treasure Map” — weekend activity introduced by John S Green

7:40 p.m.         Crystal Simone Smith: “Reimagined Journeys” (a reading from Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound, Duke University Press)

8:00 p.m.         Write Now — Dorothy Matthews: “Land, Sea, and Air: A Quest”

8:10 p.m.         Break (visit the haiga installation upstairs)

8:30 p.m.         “Haiku Tag” round of haiku reading

Share a haiku of your own and then tag someone to read their poem next, with mood-matching guitar improvisations by Jacob Salzer.

9:30 p.m.         Anonymous Workshop, led by Captain Haiku

Friday, October 25, 2024

8:00 a.m.         Breakfast

9:00 a.m.         Write Now — Kathleen Tice: “Back to Your Hometown”

9:10 a.m. Announcement of our weekend “Map Room”

Please bring one or two of your own maps or globes to display in our map room, along with an optional card to go with each map that lists at least your name and perhaps also information about any maps you bring.

9:15 a.m. Paul Blank: “Walking on the World: The Big Map Project” (a hands-on, shoes-off exploration)

Paul Blank (Annette Makino’s husband) spent his career as a geographer. Most of his field research was in the Middle East (Egypt), but he also worked earlier in the Brazilian Amazon. The bulk of his career was spent at Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt). He spent two terms there as department chair but got time off for good behavior. Like most geographers, he is obsessed by maps, and this offering involves large maps. We advise you to wear clean socks.

10:50 a.m.       Break

11:00 a.m.         Crystal Simone Smith: “Mapping Out Your Haiku Journey”

This session invites you to examine your personal explorations into haiku. What informs your haiku moments as you contemplate a natural object? In the natural world, are you a wanderer, tourist, or returner? As you map out your personal journey, consider what concepts in nature you are drawn to and why, and what themes unfold in your haiku writing.

12:00 noon     Lunch

1:00 p.m.         Richard Tice: “The Poetry Atlas: Mapping with Haiku and Haibun”

For centuries, poets have written works that highlight and focus on specific places. When a poem or collection of poems features a place and its characteristics above other content, it functions as an atlas. Poetry atlases range from the world-engaging Internet project Poetry Atlas: Mapping the World in Poetry to specific locales in Matsuo Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi. Sometimes the atlas functions on its own; sometimes it is linked to a map. This presentation explores several examples and types of poetry atlases in mainstream poetry and ways they have manifested themselves in haibun and haiku in Japanese and English. Over the course of the conference, we will create a haiku atlas for the Seabeck campus and its surrounding topography.

1:50 p.m. Break

2:00 p.m. Curtis Manley: “Climbing the Volcano—and Telling the Story with Haiku”

Forty years in the making, Curtis’s new children’s picture book Climbing the Volcano is a story told solely in haiku. The poems are in the voice of an eight-year-old hiking with his family, narrating a day spent climbing up and back down South Sister, a real volcano near Bend in central Oregon. Curtis first climbed the mountain in 1984 (as a volcanology graduate student), and 2022 marked his most recent of four ascents. He will read the book and talk about its path to publication.

2:25 p.m.         Break

2:35 p.m.         Michael Dylan Welch: “We Are Still Not Free: Color Unity in Richard Wright’s Haiku”

An exploration of numerous references to color in the groundbreaking haiku of Richard Wright, with the assertion that, through haiku, Wright found solace in reaching beyond racial discourse. Includes a personal connection to Michael’s Ghanaian background.

3:40 p.m. Long break

4:00 p.m.         Gary Evans and Peter H. Fischer: “Buen Camino! Pilgrim Poets on The Way”

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” —Bashō. Ready to lose yourself in the wonder of wandering? If so, grab your rucksack, water bottle (filled with a bit of sake perhaps), a sturdy walking stick, and your favorite notebook and pen. Join us as we share reflections and haibun from our recent Camino pilgrimages. Beginning in France, the journey takes us across the Iberian Peninsula towards Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, and beyond to Seabeck, Washington, where we invite you to write and share haiku about your own memorable wanderings.

4:50 p.m. Break

5:00 p.m. Ron Swanson: “Walking Henro: On Foot Around the Island of Shikoku”

A rugged coastline, steep mountains, wild monkeys, and singing monks are just a few of the encounters one can expect along Japan’s most popular pilgrimage route. Each year 150,000 henro undertake this 1,200-kilometer journey. Most pilgrims travel by bus, van, or car, but about 2,000 hardy adventurers travel on foot. This presentation recounts a 2006 bipedal journey to all 88 temples, and delves into henro attire, interactions with locals, the challenges of circumnavigating an island with a book of maps in a foreign language, and the benefits of perseverance.

5:50 p.m. Kukai reminder

6:00 p.m.         Kukai submissions due

Submit up to two haiku anonymously, on index cards (provided).

6:00 p.m.         Dinner

7:00 p.m.         2024 Seabeck Kukai, plus silent auction and bookfair breaks

Vote on your favorite haiku. Wooden flute music provided by Rodney Jones.

9:00 p.m.         Rengay Riot

Saturday, October 26, 2024

8:00 a.m.         Breakfast

9:00 a.m.         Welcome by Michael Dylan Welch

9:10 a.m.         Haiku Read-Around (one haiku each, for video recording)

9:30 a.m.         Write Now — Shiva Bhusal: “Into the Unknown: The Road Less Traveled”

9:45 a.m.         Anonymous Workshop, led by John S Green

Contribute an anonymous poem into either of two hats, one for folks who have never done this before, the other for everyone else.

11:00 a.m.       Crystal Simone Smith: “Moving Beyond Your Boundaries”

Now that you have a map of your personal haiku journey, we will consider some “poetic mutability.” What are ways we might vary our interactions with nature and how can we expand our lens on the natural world beyond observation and awareness to transform our writing processes? We’ll explore narrative possibilities, ekphrastic haiku, and other approaches.

12:00 noon     Lunch

1:00 p.m.         2024 Porad Awards announced by contest coordinator Angela Terry, 

   judged by Alan S. Bridges, with piano improvisation by Terry Ann Carter

1:30 p.m.         Group Photo (plus individuals/small groups)

1:45 p.m.         Commencement Bay Haiku: “A New Song: Haiku Walk and Reading,” led by Alan Harvey

A walk in the woods toward the historic Seabeck cemetery, featuring eight stations with haiku read by Commencement Bay Haiku members. We will explore changing seasons, the time of day, wind and weather, and staying in the moment to promote individual reflection. We will provide written prompts for each theme to stimulate your own creativity.

3:00 p.m.         John and Jen Green: “Hummus and Humanity: Mapping Palestine and Jordan”

Jen and John Green map out their one-year adventure in Palestine and Jordan. They recount living in Bethlehem when the Gaza war began, and their evacuation to Amman. With photos and poetry, they share their immersion into the culture of the Levant.

3:50 p.m.         Break

4:00 p.m.         Judy Kleinberg: “Found Language: Fresh Poems from Used Magazines”

Using map-themed pieces as examples, Judy Kleinberg talks about words, process, and finding the balance of accident and intention in the composition of her visual poems.

4:50 p.m. Break

5:00 p.m.         Haiku Readings (10 minutes each)

Lynne Jambor and Sheila Sondik

5:20 p.m. Break

5:25 p.m. Ce Rosenow: “A Map to Wellness: Robert Epstein, Haiku, and the Poetics of Healing”

Robert Epstein is a psychotherapist and poet who has worked with haiku and related forms for decades. His publications include more than twenty-five books (written or cowritten), fifteen anthologies (edited or coedited), and numerous essays and introductions. A primary focus in most of his work has been the ability of poetry, primarily haiku and related forms, to help humans cope with illness, grief, aging, and mortality. This presentation focuses on Epstein’s original haiku and prose about illness as an example of the poetics of healing he has created through haiku.

6:00 p.m.         Dinner

7:00 p.m.         Silent auction wrap-up

7:40 p.m. “Seabeck Treasure Map” champs, facilitated by John S Green

7:50 p.m. Haiku Northwest 35th anniversary anthology cake

8:00 p.m. Featured reading from Glimmering Hour, the Haiku Northwest 35th anniversary anthology, edited by Connie Hutchison, C.R. Manley, Susan Roberts, R. J. Swanson, and Michael Dylan Welch, with artwork by Sheila Sondik

Music — by Jacob Salzer

Anthology overview — by Connie Hutchison

About the art — by Sheila Sondik

Memorial — haiku and senryu by deceased Haiku Northwest members

Music — by Jacob Salzer

Haiku and Senryu — read by anthology contributors

Music — by Jacob Salzer

The following anthology contributors have been invited to read their work from the book: J.B. (John Burgess), Shiva Bhusal, Luke Brannon, Aidan Castle, Gary Evans, Bill Fay, Patrick Gallagher, Dianne Garcia, John S Green, Katharine Grubb, Chris Hollinger, Connie Hutchison, Roy Kindelberger, Nicholas Klacsanzky, David Lasky, Carole MacRury, C.R. Manley, Dorothy Avery Matthews, Tanya McDonald, Joan Perkins, petro c. k., Susan Lee Roberts, Sheila Sondik, Ann Spiers, R. J. Swanson, Sala Sweet, Angela Terry, Kathleen Tice, Richard Tice, and Michael Dylan Welch.

9:00 p.m. Social Break

9:30 p.m.         Late-Night Rengay, led by Michael Dylan Welch

Sunday, October 27, 2024

8:00 a.m.         Breakfast

9:00 a.m.         Write Now — Peg Cherrin-Myers: “Are We There Yet?”

9:10 a.m.         Terry Ann Carter: “Mapping My Way Through Cambodia: A Haiku Chronicle”

A haiku and photographic journey (including a small handmade book on spirit houses) chronicling the poet’s work in Cambodia (housebuilding in the outer provinces and training young girls to create with silk in Phnom Penh) with Tabitha Foundation from 2000 to 2006.

9:35 a.m.         Break

9:45 a.m.       Crystal Simone Smith: “The Shape of Haiku”

Haiku doesn’t have to be just three lines. Let’s have fun with those words, arranging them in shapes or taking advantage of visual opportunities.

10:15 a.m.       Weekend Highlights (gratitude, discussion, and sharing)

11:00 a.m.       Clean-up (we must be completely cleaned out of the room by noon)

12:00 noon     Lunch

1:00 p.m.         Check-out time! (all room keys must be turned in by 1:00 p.m.)

1:30 p.m.         Afternoon activity (optional, to be announced, if anything)

Happy Halloween!