Meeting in the Blue Room, Pacific Asia Museum, Saturday August 21, 2010

While our wonderful moderator, Deborah P Kolodji was on her way to San Francisco to be one of the four honored readers at "Two Autumns" reading, Billie Dee was here from San Diego to host the meeting and lead the anonymous haiku workshop. Many interesting discussions extended throughout the meeting on topics of kigo, Japanese language elements, Southern California seasons, characteristics of haiku composition, historical and contemporary, haiku books for study and more. We each read a new haiku to begin the session, or one favorite from our books. Conversation on haiku and Billie's interesting views and questions followed, while we sipped jasmine tea and shared snacks. After ripening figs was suggested as a local summer kigo, one of our members walked in with figs from her own tree! After a break we contributed and continued with an anonymous haiku workshop. Genie wrote the haiku on the whiteboard, and Lynn timed the discussion, which was very animated and helpful. By extending the end-time we finished discussions on all the haiku and more! We were all thinking of Debbie and her reading, happy that she was honored in this way, and looking forward to our next meeting and our anthology reading September 26.

an island of egrets... the 2010 SCHSG Anthology is going to press!

Dear Haiku Friends,

I am very pleased to announce that an island of egrets... the 2010 Southern California Haiku Study Group Anthology is complete and ready to go to the printer. From our first beautiful hand-made 2001 edition with eight founding haijin, we have grown to a volume of 65 poets. Our new book will be perfect-bound with a full-color heavy-stock cover, featuring 267 poems, including a fine selection of regional Spanish Language haiku with English translations. This collection emphasizes our unique climate and geography, our rich cultural diversity, and embraces the broad range of experience of our contributing haijin. I think you will be very pleased with the superb quality of work in this, our 10th Anniversary Edition!

The Anthologies will be available at our annual reading and celebration at the Pacific Asia Museum, 46 North Los Robles, Pasadena, CA, on Sunday, Sept. 26th at 2 p.m. There will be another reading in San Diego at The Ink Spot, the downtown gallery loft of San Diego Writers, Ink, located at 710 13th Street, San Diego, CA, on Saturday, October 9th at 2 p.m. Please mark your calendars. For those of you who have paid for postage, the books will be mailed Monday, Sept 27th.

Here is our roster of poets:

Michael Angerman, Ashley Baldon, Jerry Ball, Marcia Behar, Tom Bilicke, Paty Blake, Darrell Byrd, Peggy Castro, Elizabeth Cazessus, Marcyn Del Clements, Phyllis Collins, Joan E. Day, Billie Dee, D'ellen, James Robert Dunn, Pauli Dutton, Kimberly Esser, Hadia Farfan, Linda Galloway, Olga Garcia, Claudia Barreda Gaxiola, Victor P. Gendrano, John Gentry, Risa R. Goldberg, Anita Guenin, William Hart, Margaret Hehman-Smith, Una Nichols Hynum, Gloria Jaguden, Oleg Kagan, Patricia Kelly, Karen Kenyon, Deborah P. Kolodji, Sean Kolodji, Daniel E. Lambert, Elva Lauter, Stephanie Leuer, Greg Longenecker, Eve Luckring, Ed Lukstein, Janis Lukstein, Frances Ruhlen McConnel, Seretta Martin, Juan Martinez, Carrie Moniz, Liz Myers-Chamberlin, Naia, Genie Nakano, Ruth Nolan, Victor Ortiz, Brosnan Rhodes, Susan Rogers, Thomas Spann, Melissa Spurr, Stevie Strang, Karen Stromberg, Judith Terzi, G. Murray Thomas, Maja Trochimczyk, Megan Webster, Elizabeth Yahn Williams, Kathabela Wilson, James Won, Wendy Wright, An Xiao

For those of you who have not yet ordered copies, please be aware that there will no second printing. This full-size poetry book would ordinarily retail for $15, but is available to contributors at the generously discounted pre-publication price of $8 for the first copy, $6 for each copy thereafter. They make wonderful holiday and thank-you gifts. To order your copies, or to add to your current order, please make your check out to SCHSG and mail before August 20th to:

Haiku Anthology
PO Box 620457
San Diego, CA 92162

Be sure to add postage of $2.75 for the first book, plus $0.85 for each additional copy if you will not be picking up your book(s) at one of our readings. If there are any questions, please contact me before August 20th at haikuanthology@gmail.com.

Congratulations to all of us on our 10th Anniversary Edition!

Billie Dee, editor
2010 Southern California Haiku Study Group Anthology