Haiku North America 2011 (Seattle, WA)
Haiku North America takes place every two years and is the biggest conference in North America. In 2011, HNA took place in Seattle.
For the first time, I brought my laptop to the event and was able to make comics live during the event and post them up on my blog at night.
I also gave my first presentation about Old Pond Comics. People laughed.
1. Ginko walk to the international fountain:
2. Gingko walk to the Monorail:
3. Gingko walk at Pike Market:
4. Early morning tai chi and haiku writting session with with Don Baird:
5. Bruce Ross discussed Spaciousness in haiku:
6. Wanda Cook discussed sensual haiku in a dim-lit room perfumed with lavender smell. Her erotic haiku were pre-approved by her son Steven:
"My son, Steven, loved his 15 minutes of fame via the Steven censored cartoons! What fun." -- Wanda Cook, letter, September 2012.
7. David G. Lanoue presented 30 haiku about frogs written by Issa (2 comics):
8.Eve Luckring showed examples of montage techniques from classic russian cinema to explain video renku:.
9.Carlos Colon showed great examples of concrete poems and I felt like trying one myself:
10. During the Haiku Bowl, two teams - appropriately named the Birds versus the Frogs (which I believe was an hommage to the famous haiku "On how to sing the skylark school and the frog school are arguing") - faced off to answer the hardest haiku quizz I've ever head!
Update: Oh-oh, I must have spaced out towards the end, Michael Dylan Welch e-mailed me recently to say that it's the Frog team (his team) that won the game, not the Birds. Anyway, a comic featuring birds pooping is always funny, even though I the score is wrong (sorry, frogs!)
11. Garry Gay took the Conference Group photo:
Kaeru means "frog" in Japanese, so yes, technically, all these frogs were "Kaeru".
12. Banquet at the Space Needle
(Someone should have told the frogs that the party was inside!)
13. A surprise performance by Carlos Colon, dressed as Elvis Presley and reciting hilarious "KingKu" was a big hit during the banquet:
14. La Famille Léger gave a great Folk Music Performance and got all of us dancing!
15. Jim Kacian gave good examples of Monoku (one-line haiku). One of my favorite moment of the conference occured when Jim Kacian asked Cor Van Den Heuvel to read his famous one-word poem "tundra".
Cor Van Den Heuvel stood up, his charismatic presence filling the room, then with a powerful voice he blurted "TUNDRA!" His voice resonnated in the room with so much power, it was like the word exploding in the middle of a white page. We were all blown away.
Here's my (frog-version) hommage to Cor Van Den Heuvel reading his one-word poem:
Published in FrogPond volume 34:3, Fall 2011, p.114
16.Gingko walk... at the Experience Music Project
I confess that I cut short on the gingko walk at the Museum of Art to visit the Experience Music Project where I realized one of my teenage dreams: to play the drums! Oh, my frog! It was so much fun! And the EMP building - shaped like a melted guitar - that was really something!
(In case you're wondering... no, I did not buy a hat there.)
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