The Cradle Of Haiku Festival is back!  We welcome all Haiku enthusiasts to a weekend of Haiku, friendship, food and fun.  Workshops, open readings, special presentations and more await you in Mineral Point, Wisconsin Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 5, 6 and 7.  More details about the program schedule will follow.  The Festival will be $40 per person.  

We urge you to register as soon as possible and also book a room for the weekend. You can register online by clicking the tab above. Hotel, motel and B&B suggestions can be found at the Mineral Point Chamber of Commerce.

You may also stay in touch through our Facebook page, Cradle of American Haiku. If you have questions please don't hesitate to email Shan Thomas at [email protected].   Can't wait to see everyone!  Mineral Point has missed all of you!
Location
Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Date & Time
August 5, 2022, 12:00 PM - August 7, 2022 - 12:00 PM
Schedule
FRIDAY, AUGUST 5
12:00 - 3:00 pM
REGISTRATION -  The Walker House
Register and/or check in and pick up your Welcome Packet.  If you have books to sell, drop them off here.
3:30 - 3:45 pM
WELCOME - Jerome Cushman
4:00 - 4:45 PM
AMERICAN HAIKU ARCHIVES - Shan Thomas - Odd Fellows Hall, 112 Front Street
American Haiku (1963-1968) was the first magazine published in the United States that focused on English language haiku. The records were created by the founders of American Haiku magazine, James Bull, Donald Eulert and Gayle Webster Bull and are now part of the Mineral Point Library Archives. This presentation will take a look at what is included in the archives, how it can be used, share some slides of interesting findings and answer your questions about this unique treasure trove of haiku history.  
5:00 - 6:00 PM
Refreshments and appetizers in the garden. (In case of rain, the event will be held at The Walker House.)
6:00 - 7:30 PM
DINNER ON YOUR OWN 
A list of restaurants from the Chamber of Commerce are included in your Welcome Packet.
7:30 - 9:00 PM
OPEN READING - Location TBD
Bring some haiku to share. This will also be an opportunity to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Prune Juice Journal with selected readings by past Prune Juice editors. And as three Midwest Haiku groups have recently published anthologies, we invite contributors to share some of their work from those books.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 6
8:30 - 9:30 AM
REGISTRATION - The Walker House
Register and/or check in and pick up your Welcome Packet.
8:00 - 9:15 AM
FARMER’S MARKET -  Water Tower Park
9:30 - 10:30 AM
HOW HAIBUN WORK - THE 5 SPARKS - Lew Watts - The Walker House
What makes the haibun form so powerful and exciting? This presentation will describe the key elements of haibun and how, if handled well, they interact to create something magical. Through examples, we will show how writers can best achieve this. We will also examine how readers can fully appreciate this magic, created through the release of five bursts of insight, or “sparks.”  Finally, we will explore examples of how to break the rules by experimenting with form, voice, rhythm, pacing, and focus.
10:30 - 10:45 AM
BREAK
10:45 - 11:45 AM
HAIKU DATABASE AND HAIKUPEDIA - Charles Trumbull - The Walker House
In the early 1990s, shortly after he got serious about haiku, Charlie realized that his new computer—and later the Internet—offered unique opportunities for archiving, studying, showcasing, and promotion of haiku. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for example, to have a first-line index of English-language haiku like those that exist for long poetry? But then, haiku are short, why not go for full-text? Now Charlie, a self-confessed database addict, began gathering all English-language haiku he could find for the Haiku Database which now, in August 2022, contains well over a half million entries. Over the years he has added additional databases: Bibliobase (for books, mainly Western languages—11,700 entries), Articles Database (10,700 entries), the Poems Database (full texts of sequences, haibun, renga/renku, tanka, and short poems, mostly appearing in haiku journals (only 5,700 entries — it’s new!), and . . . Haikupedia, a slush-bucket database for random information about haiku people, places, events, definitions, etc. (22,000 entries). This last database is in the process of morphing into the Haikupedia website, which has been live for three years. In today’s presentation Charlie will discuss the particulars and evolution of his magnum opus.
12:00 - 2:00 PM
LUNCH ON YOUR OWN
A list of restaurants from The Chamber of Commerce is included in your Welcome Packet. This is also an opportunity to visit the book sales and American Haiku archives.
2:00 - 3:00 pM
SIJO - Marjorie Buettner - The Walker House
Sijo (pronounced SHEE-JO) is a form of Korean poetry that was sung in three lines.  The first line introduces the theme or question, the second line answers the theme or question and the last line has a twist for the end. There are a total of 44-46 syllables total, with 14-16 per line broken up in sections.  Each line has a pause in the middle with smaller pauses between the other sections.  Lines 1 and 2 have similar syllable count (3-4-3-4 syllables per section) and content, Line 3 has a different syllable count (3-5-4-3 per section) and content (twist).  There is some variation in syllable count per line.  As each line can be long, they are sometimes broken up into two.  Let's explore this fascinating form!  EXAMPLE: “Love,” It is a lying word. / That you love me, another lie. / “The loved one is seen in dreams.” / That is still a greater lie.  / How can I, who can never sleep, / hope to see you in my dreams? / -Kim Sangyong (1561-1637)
3:00 - 3:30 pM
BREAK
3:30 - 4:30 PM
EXPERIMENTATION, LITERARY CRAFT & INTUITION: BILL PAULY’S
HAIKU WALK
- Randy and Shirley Brooks - The Walker House
In this presentation we will join Bill Pauly’s lifelong journey into the literary art of writing haiku. We will follow the chronology of his experiments with haiku, eyeku, sequences, and collaborative call-and-response renga and tan-renga. We will pause along the way to admire many of the award-winning gems he has left behind for us to admire and emulate. We will see how his haiku sometimes seek the highest of heights as well as the depths of loss and suffering.
Throughout the journey Bill has always been a poet who writes with compassion and understanding. As editors of his selected haiku, Shirley and I had the opportunity to see his notes and variations of haiku drafts shared with his students. He revised and polished each haiku for readers, often based on student or friends’ feedback. His haiku continue to teach us to write in the here and now, but also to seek the elusive “real-seeming” which goes into the beyond.
5:00 - 6:00 PM
COCKTAIL HOUR (Cash bar) - The Walker House
6:00 - 8:00 PM
BANQUET - The Walker House
5:00 - 9:00 PM
The Mineral Point galleries will be open until 9:00 PM including the museum of Mineral Point artists in the Mineral Point Library.

Following the banquet, please pick up any unsold book sale items in The Walker House.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 7
9:00 - 10:00 aM
GINKO WALK - Old City Cemetery
10:30 - 12:30 PM
Good food and an open reading of poems from the morning ginko.
Speakers
Dr. Randy Brooks & Shirley Brooks
Dr. Randy Brooks recently retired as the Dean of Arts & Sciences but continues to teach courses on haiku at Millikin University. He and his wife, Shirley Brooks, are publishers of Brooks Books and co-editors of Mayfly haiku magazine. In 1976 they started publishing a magazine called High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Verse. They have been editing and publishing mini-chapbooks, chapbooks, paperbacks and clothbound editions of haiku ever since. Two of their most recent collections: Walking Uneven Ground: Selected Haiku of Bill Pauly, and My Red: The Selected Haiku of John Stevenson, won both Touchstone Book Awards from The Haiku Foundation and Haiku Merit Book Awards from the Haiku Society of America. Randy’s most recent books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka of Randy Brooks and The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku: A Reader Response Approach.
Marjorie Buettner
Marjorie Buettner is a Pushcart nominated, award winning haiku, tanka, sijo and haibun poet who has published widely throughout the U.S. and U.K. and has previously been an editor for the online journal Contemporary Haibun Online. She has taught haiku and tanka at the Loft in Minneapolis and has presented various poetry workshops throughout Minnesota. Her new collection of haibun, Some Measure of Existence (published by Red Dragonfly Press, 2014), won first place in the 2015 Mildred Kanterman Merit Book Awards; it was also nominated for the Minnesota Book Awards. She has a collection of haiku and tanka published by Red Dragonfly Press: Seeing It Now, 2008. She writes book reviews for various haiku and tanka journals.
Shan Thomas
Shan Thomas is the Archivist for the Mineral Point Library Archives.  She came out of retirement to take on the position.  Shan lives in Mineral Point with her partner Gerry Glaeve, who, ten years ago, introduced her to Gayle Bull and the art of Haiku.  While not a poet herself, she sat at the feet of some of the best Haiku writers in the country as they met around Gayle's dining room table and came to admire the art form.  Caring for the American Haiku magazine collection is her small way of honoring the cultural contributions of Haiku and the memory of Gayle.
Charles Trumbull
Charles Trumbull (born Charles Perry Trumbull III, May 17, 1943, Flint, Michigan, U.S.A.). American editor, publisher, and haiku historian and poet. Author of two award-winning books of and about haiku, he served as president of the Haiku Society of America, honorary curator of the American Haiku Archive, editor of Modern Haiku and co-organizer of two Haiku North America conferences. Trumbull is the founding editor of Haikupedia. He has resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2009.
Lew Watts
Lew Watts is the haibun co-editor of Frogpond and the author of Tick-Tock (Snapshot Press, 2019), a haibun collection that received an Honorable Mention in the Haiku Society of America’s 2020 Merit Book Awards. His publications also include the novel Marcel Malone, the poetry collection Lessons for Tangueros, and a forthcoming collection of haiku and haibun from Snapshot Press. Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, he lives in Chicago with his wife, Roxanne Decyk. His other passions are fly fishing, rugby, and gin martinis.

Processing Registration...