Country of Residence:USA

When & how were you introduced to haiku & Japanese-related poetry?

I studied Japanese language and culture in high school and college, but oddly enough I never really was exposed to traditional Japanese poetry in an academic setting. They teach conversational Japanese in high school, and business Japanese in college, and while I read a lot of modern Japanese novels in translation, there were no lower division classes on Japanese poetry. So my first haiku introductions were, like many Americans, the translations of R. H. Blyth, as quoted in Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or emulated in the American haiku of Jack Kerouac. The heavy Zen Buddhist focus of that interpretation of haiku never really stuck with me, so it wasn’t until years later that I really found Japanese poetry and took an interest.

I took a workshop given by Margaret Chula at the