I wanted to write something today about the Haiku Society of America, and how much I appreciate the work that they do! As soon as this learn-everything-about-haiku project really started taking shape for me, I signed up to join the Haiku Society of America on May 31, and that meant I was just in time to receive their June 2025 newsletter, which was full of all kinds of information... and what immediately caught my attention was an announcement about a meeting of the Austin Haiku group on June 14. How amazing is that???!?

So I contacted the organizer, Agnes Savich, to ask her to please include me on the Austin email list... and because the meeting was at a cafe I could reach by bus (yay!), I was able to join in and meet some wonderful haiku poets in person at the June get-together.  (And thanks to Kick Butt Coffee for providing such a great venue for our community meeting!)

And then later in June there was also a meeting via Zoom of the Southwest group, so I got to meet even more haiku poets!

This sense of haiku community is really amazing. As someone who has spent a lot of time in different educational and cultural communities over the decades, the vibe here is just exceptional: so friendly and welcoming and totally unpretentious. Which is what I would expect from a haiku group I guess; the same things that are drawing me into the poetry also make good foundations for community-building... although this haiku community is still a lovely surprise that I did not expect.

What's next? Well, I think I am going to submit my Know-Your-Haiku-Game presentation for the virtual HSA conference in November. The submissions are due by August 15, so that will give me time to re-think and improve my presentation (it's happening next week: July 9, gulp!) before submitting it. I'm actually feeling optimistic because I did a dry-run of the presentation with two friends who are very new to haiku (thank you, Liz and Patti!), and I was so happy that it worked really well — by the time we had reviewed the list of haiku poetry features, they were finding all those features in the poems that we looked at. (And I love the poems I found in the Living Haiku Anthology to use for the game, so even just introducing people to that amazing resource online is already a big plus, totally aside from the game itself.)

Conclusion: I would encourage anyone with an ongoing interest in haiku to join Haiku Society of America in order to connect with other people who are into haiku. Maybe there will be a face-to-face group in your city (we are so lucky to have Agnes leading our Austin group!), but if not, I'm guessing you will find a regional group meeting via Zoom, and there is also so much to explore at their website: Haiku Society of America.

For example, be sure to check out Frogpond, the HSA journal which you can read online. Just read the haiku in this latest edition of the journal and see how they make you feel. I am still amazed at the power of these tiny poems that people write!

And the essays are great too; for example, here's one from this latest issue: Mexican Haiku: Tradition, Translation, and Transgression by Cristina Rascón. How cool is that?

So much goodness here at HSA, both for haiku beginners like myself and for people who are advanced appreciators of haiku. (As I hope to be someday too!)