Haiku North America 2011

New Location: Haiku North America to be Held in Rochester, New York, July 27–31, 2011

Organizers of the 2011 Haiku North America conference are pleased to announce that Rochester, New York, will now host the 2011 HNA conference, to be held July 27–31, 2011. The conference will maintain the theme of education in haiku and will take place at the Rochester Institute of Technology, cosponsored by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, by the Postsecondary Educational Network-International funded by the Nippon Foundation of Tokyo, and by the Rochester Area Haiku Group. Led by Jerome Cushman, the local organizing committee also includes Carolyn Dancy, Deb Koen, and Deanna Tiefenthal, with local and long-distance help from Francine Banwarth, Randy Brooks, and others. Anticipated activities include an Erie Canal boat cruise, banquet, regional readings, a memorial reading, anthology, T-shirts, and possible visits to nearby cultural attractions, including the National Museum of Play and a guided tour of historic Mt. Hope Cemetery, the oldest Victorian municipal cemetery in America and burial site of Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, and poet Adelaide Crapsey. More details will be provided at www.haikunorthamerica.com and on the HNA Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Haiku-North-America/113127392085466 (please take a look and click Like! if you're a Facebook member). For more information, please contact Jerome Cushman at jercush@aol.com or Michael Dylan Welch at welchm@aol.com. We look forward to seeing you at Haiku North America in Rochester!

Note: Randy Brooks and Millikin University regret that they are not able to host HNA in 2011. We’re grateful for Randy’s initial work in planning HNA for 2011, and also grateful to haiku poets in Rochester, New York, for taking on the conference. Don’t miss it!

—Michael Dylan Welch, Garry Gay, and Paul Miller

Call for Proposals

If you already submitted a proposal for HNA at Millikin University, it will still be considered (no need to resend). If you would like to submit a new proposal, please send it to Michael Dylan Welch at WelchM@aol.com by January 31, 2011. The theme will be education in haiku, but proposals do not have to fit the theme. Proposals can include papers, presentations, panel discussions, readings, workshops, or other activities featuring haiku and related literature (except tanka) in North America. Please provide the following details with your proposal (directly in your email message; no attached files, please):

1. Title (as you would want it to appear in the conference program—make it catchy or provocative if appropriate).

2. A maximum of 50 words describing your presentation (as you would want it to appear in the conference program; please write to attract an audience.

3. Additional descriptions or goals of your presentation (for the benefit of conference organizers), mentioning any planned handouts or activities.

4. Special needs such as digital projection (for PowerPoint presentations), audio, whiteboard, etc.

5. Length of time needed or preferred.