Haiku Aotearoa 2008   

Speakers and Tutors

Nola Borrell has had haiku published in New Zealand and overseas since the mid-1990s. She is co-editing the 2008 national haiku anthology and will judge junior haiku in the 2008 NZPS contest. She co-organised the national haiku festival in 2005.  Nola belongs to Windrift Haiku Group in Wellington, compiles HaikuNewZ for NZPS's ‘a fine line’, and is a member of Zazen. 

Owen Bullock came to New Zealand in 1989, from Cornwall, via Wales. He writes poetry, songs and stories, and his haiku and related forms have been published in many countries. He co-edits Kokako, New Zealand’s only magazine dedicated to haiku, tanka, haibun and related genres, with Patricia Prime. He lives at Waihi.  

Cyril Childs first became intrigued with haiku while working in the Japanese city of Matsuyama in 1989. Intrigue soon led to enthusiasm to learn more. In 1993 and 1998 he edited anthologies of NZ haiku published by the NZPS, and in 2002 co-edited listening to the rain with Joanna Preston. He has judged several haiku competitions. 

Laurice Gilbert is the National Coordinator and current President of the New Zealand Poetry Society. She enjoys the mental and linguistic challenge of writing haiku and senryu, though not a great deal of success in publication. She is particularly interested in the cooperative forms, and appreciates the degree of rapport that goes into creating renga. 

Jeffrey Harpeng’s haiku and renga became migratory birds when his children were toddlers and infants. Now, as a grandparent there are more haibun in the flock. Jeffrey was there when a group of Christchurch haijin first gathered around a small white teapot. He now gathers with paper wasps. A number of his haiku and haibun hatchlings have come home to roost bearing laurel wreaths. Some have nested in anthologies in his homes, on both sides of the Tasman and in the USA & UK. 

Karen Peterson Butterworth lives in Otaki, a place abounding in haiku moments. She has published prose and poetry, including haiku, in seven countries and won awards in four. She enjoys the haiku's simplicity and treasures the friends she has made at haiku gatherings. 

Joanna Preston first met haiku at primary school in outback Australia. Her real haiku apprenticeship began fifteen years later in Christchurch. She has won haiku and haibun competitions, co-authored (with Cyril Childs) the haiku anthology listening to the rain, co-founded the Small White Teapot Haiku Group, and twice edited the NZPS anthology. 

Kerrin Sharpe is a teacher of creative writing. She has recently been published in Takahe, Snorkel 5 & 6 and Turbine’07. For Kerrin reading and writing haiku is a way of life; an invitation to look closer.   

Sandra Simpson is the editor of the Haiku News webpages and secretary of the Katikati Haiku Pathway Committee. She is the winner of the 2007 Kokako International Haiku Contest and was the only southern hemisphere haiku poet included in the 2007 anthology A New Resonance 5 edited by Jim Kacian.  

Barbara Strang has written and enjoyed haiku for over a decade. Her haiku and haibun have been published here and overseas. She has twice won the New Zealand Poetry Society’s Haiku Competition and co-won the Kokako Competition. She was brought up in Invercargill, and at present finds refuge by the Estuary, Christchurch. 

Richard von Sturmer is a writer and filmmaker. His latest book, Suchness: Zen Poetry and Prose (HeadworX, 2005), features sections on haiku, tanka and haibun. His haiku have been published regularly in literary journals and anthologies, both in New Zealand and overseas.

Organisers