Several poets from New Zealand and Australia are organising a virtual haiku conference to be called: Haiku Down Under. The conference will be held from 7-9 October 2022. Details for the event can be found here.

After the poets met online at Haiku North America in 2021, they decided to organise a similar event for Australia/New Zealand in 2022. Below are a couple of haiku written by two of the conference organisers. I like to think these haiku might allude to the sharing of poetry:

wind song
between boulders —
ochre handprints

Leanne Mumford, Australia
Echidna Tracks 2, 2019 and Touchstone Award Winner

crossing over . . .
in this stillness
the wind’s shiver

Sherry Grant, New Zealand
Otoroshi Journal, Issue 1, Spring 2021

As I mentioned, Haiku Down Under will be a virtual conference. It will operate on Zoom and will, therefore, be accessible to writers from New Zealand, Australia and around the world.

The conference programme will include presentations, prompted writing sessions and workshops. Much of the focus will be on haiku that seek to ‘celebrate our seasons, people, landscapes and seascapes, vernacular language, and flora and fauna’.

The organisers have, however, also welcomed proposals relating to senryu, linked forms, haibun, tanka and haiga. So, the programme as a whole should offer a good deal of variety. The schedule of events is currently being put together and will be released in the coming months.

I invite you to put the dates for Haiku Down Under in your diary and to check back with the Haiku Down Under website from time to time to view the conference programme once it’s been finalised.