Clark Strand

Workshop Leader

Clark Strand

An accomplished master of the haiku form, Clark Strand has been writing poetry for fifty years and teaching haiku for thirty. A former Vice President of the Haiku Society of America, he is the author of books on poetry, spirituality, and ecology, including "Seeds From A Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey" and "The Way Of The Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary", co-authored with his wife Perdita Finn. He teaches the popular group Weekly Haiku Challenges with Clark Strand on Facebook and writes the column “On Haiku” for "Tricycle: The Buddhist Review".

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The Gathering Room

Location

The Gathering Room

More Info

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Date

Mar 19 - 21 2021
Expired!

Time

Please see description below for session times. REMEMBER TO CONVERT IF YOU ARE NOT ON EASTERN TIME
6:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Cost

$250.00

Clark Strand: Celebrate the Season with Haiku: An Online Equinox Weekend Retreat

Check out Clark Strand’s free recorded program, Whatever You Can Get Away With In 17 Syllables: An Introduction to Haiku, and his articles on Centerpost, Plop!: On Bashō’s Most Famous Haiku and Haiku and the Art of Play.

Spring begins officially on Saturday, March 20th in the northern hemisphere, just as the first light starts to appear in the sky. For thousands of years, humans have marked the vernal equinox as a time of celebration and renewal. The earth warms. The trees blossom. The cold releases its hold on all created things.
The first spring peepers
still remember having ice
inside of their mouths.
At 17 syllables, haiku is the shortest poem in world literature. Written by millions of people worldwide, in almost every language, haiku is also the most popular poetic form in the world. But what is a haiku exactly?

6:00- 8:00pm EST Friday night, first session

Our workshop begins on Friday night by covering the basics of haiku: its form, its seasonal subject matter, and that little spark of wit or insight that is essential to every good poem. By the end of the evening, participants will be ready to write haiku of their own.

9:15am -12:15pm EST Saturday, second session

 Saturday begins with a discussion of the different ways of “finding” a haiku. This will be followed by a period of writing time. The morning session concludes with participants sharing their haiku with the group, receiving positive feedback about the poems that worked.

3:15-6:15pm EST Saturday, third session

The afternoon repeats this pattern, but with a difference. Now we will be learning how to use “season words” in our haiku. Following the writing period, each poet will read the poems they liked the best from this exercise, and we will use these to explore what makes a good seasonal poem. 

7:45-10pm EST Saturday, fourth session

Our evening gathering takes the form of a ku-kai, or traditional haiku meeting where participants submit their poems anonymously and vote on their favorites, stating briefly what they liked about each poem. This is how poets learn their craft in Japan. 

9:00am-1:00pm EST  Sunday, fifth session

On Sunday, we will take a ginko, or “haiku walk. Participants are invited to explore their local environments looking for signs of early spring. We will then gather for a shorter, more impromptu ku-kai meeting. 

As with all our paid programs, recordings will be shared with registered participants on a password protected site. You will receive the information to access this site in your registration confirmation email.

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