Past General Announcements
The Society’s 2018 annual membership meeting
This meeting will be held on Sunday, September 16, at the Cliffwood Estates Mobile Home Park clubhouse, 3200 Cliffwood Drive, (off Soquel drive) Soquel, beginning at 11 am, ending no later than 3 pm.
Please park in the lot next to clubhouse, or on the street directly before the clubhouse on the bottlebrush side of the road, opposite of homes.
Members are invited to bring potluck offerings for a midday meal. Please bring your beverage of choice and a table setting as well. A kettle of hot water will be available, also a stovetop and oven.
The agenda will include
State of the Society message
Business, including proposals from the floor
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Poet Edith Shiffert dies in Kyoto
The well-known poet and scholar, Edith Shiffert, a long-time friend of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society died recently at the age 101. The New York Times has published an obituary. Edith was very kind to many haiku poets visiting Kyoto. The photograph below shows her with YTHS poets on a 1997 visit to the tomb of Buson, whose work she translated.
Left to right: Kyoko Tokutomi, June Hopper Hymas, Edith Shiffert, D. Claire Gallagher, Alex Benedict, Minoru Sawano (Edith’s husband), Alice Benedict, Lynn Leach, Patricia Machmiller. Photo by Patrick Gallagher.
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Okayama – San Jose Friendship Anniversary
On Friday, April 21, 2017 over one hundred special guests from the City of Okayama, Japan, including the mayor and council members visited Kelley Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden. The visit was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the San Jose – Okayama sister city relationship. The Friendship Garden is a living symbol of that special bond.
On their arrival the guests were given a bilingual haiku brochure themed to the garden. The brochure was developed by Roger Abe, Betty Arnold and Patricia Machmiller, haiku translations by Mariko Kitakubo, and finished and printed by the City of San Jose, PRNS marketing team and Kelley Park. Poets contributing to the fifteen haiku in the brochure: Kyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, Dyana Basist, Patricia Machmiller, Alison Woolpert, Eleanor Carolan, Judith Schallberger, Mimi Ahern, Patrick Gallagher, Marcia Behar, Betty Arnold, Roger Abe and Joan Zimmerman.
From all accounts the haiku were well received! Among the guests was Midori Teramoto of the Kibi no Haiku Group. This project was conceived as a thank you to the park from the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society for many years of use of the garden and the Teahouse, as well as a commemorative gift.
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Yuki Teikei and the American Haiku Archives
Two podcasts featuring Yuki Teikei contributions to the Haiku Archives at the California State Library are now available. Both podcasts were recorded on April 13, 2017 at the California State Library, and can be found at this link.
One recording features Gary Gay, one of the founders of the Haiku Archives, speaking with Patricia Machmiller of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and Gene Larsen of the California State Library staff.
In the second recording, members of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society of San Jose, Patricia Machmiller, Alison Woolpert and Carole Steele—discuss their work with the American Haiku Archives, housed at the California State Library. They, together with Patrick Gallagher of the Society, read from the letters and haiku of Kiyoshi and Kiyoto Tokutomi, founders of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and they read a selection of haiku from Cherry Blossom Light, an anthology of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, published in 2016. This podcast was recorded on April 13, 2017 at the California State Library.
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The year 2015, marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society (YTHS). There were many celebrations and events honoring this occasion. Patricia Machmiller created a one-page calendar of the special events, beautifully illustrated with one of her pen-and-ink drawings. Here is a link to it.
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One of our members, June Hymas, undertook the authoring of a pictorial daily blog to celebrate each day of 2015 in pictures and poetry of YTHS. A link to her blog is here.
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Winter Holiday Party, Pot Luck and Haiku Exchange
at the home of:
Al and Patricia Machmiller6116 Dunn Ave.San Jose, CA 95123 |
on December 10, 2016 from 5-9 PM. Phone (408)373-5024 for directions and more details. Newcomers welcome. Please bring a dish(no peanuts please) and a haiku (25-30 copies) to share.
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Jane Reichhold (1937—2016)
It is with great sadness we report the passing of Jane Reichhold. She was a great friend to YTHS and to the world of haiku. In 1991 when Yuki Teikei needed someone to take over the editorship of GEPPO, Jane very generously volunteered; she served as editor until 1993.
Jane was born Janet Styer in Lima, Ohio. Over forty books of her haiku, renga, tanka, and translations have been published. Her latest book by Kodansha USA, was Bashō: The Complete Haiku. Another recent book was A Dictionary of Haiku, Second Edition, containing about 5,000 haiku which is available through Amazon.com. As founder and editor of AHA Books, Jane also published Mirrors: International Haiku Forum, and she co-edited with her husband, Werner Reichhold, Lynx for Linking Poets from 1992–2014. Lynx went online in 2000 on AHApoetry.com, the website Jane started in 1995. For many years she and Werner resided near Gualala, California.
Jane was a creative, exuberant, and prolific writer; here are a few of her many haiku from From the Dipper . . . Drops, Humidity Productions (Gualala CA, 1983):
no guests today In the spring sunshine
a fly swatter lies across the strangeness of his perfectly
the Sunday papers normal thumbnail
In my garden Caught on a grape leaf
the apples on this still bent tree enough raindrops to water
are still not mine. a sparrow
floating islands carry the sum mer’s heat
their own clouds of mist swallowed up by the gap
migrating whales in the watermelon
Friends of Jane shared these haiku:
shocked by her death legendary golden rose a friend I longed to know— their love for each other on a broken stem mid-summer fog Altair and Vega lingering fragrance Carolyn Fitz Patricia J. Machmiller Eleanor Carolan
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At every biennial HNA meeting there is a session memorializing poets who have died since the last meeting. This year there were many names of people well known and dear to YTHS members. After the formal presentation there was an opportunity for audience members to call out names of poets who had earlier passed away.
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A special exhibit, Shining Wind: Forty Years of English Haiku, was on display April 3rd to April 19th, 2015 at the Japanese American Museum, 535 N. 5th St., San Jose, CA. Thursdays – Sundays 12 – 4 PM (see the 2015 Society Events page for more details). This exhibit was a lively look at the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society teaching English speakers a traditional Japanese poetry form: haiku.
A 1975 Japantown start-up by the husband and wife team, Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, YTHS has blossomed into a vigorous society centered in San Jose, but with outreach to many other US states, and other countries, including: Canada, Australia, and Japan. Today members celebrate a long list of accomplishments including: a bi-monthly newsletter, an annual members’ anthology, a regional saijiki, an annual haiku contest, and an annual Haiku Retreat.
At the 2012 Retreat YTHS hosted the great physicist and haiku poet, Dr. Akito Arima from Tokyo. In each season throughout the year, YTHS members gather to write and exchange haiku: in May—a Teahouse Reading in San Jose’s Japanese Friendship Garden; in July—on the seventh day of the seventh month, Tanabata; in Fall— a moon-viewing party; and in December—a Winter Holiday Party. Come enjoy the merger of a graceful tradition with modern Silicon Valley life, as evidenced in the historical photos, artifacts, memorabilia, and haiku on display.
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It is with profound sadness we report that Teruo Yamagata, born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1932, the President of the Yukuharu Haiku Society of Japan, and a long-time member of Yuki Teikei Haiku Society passed away on February 16, 2015 in Tokyo. As an engineer for IHI, Yamagata often traveled to the Bay Area where he meet with Kiyoko and Kiyoshi Tokutomi, founders of YTHS. He had the privilege of studying English under R. H. Blythe in 1948. He was awarded the Yukuharu SOSHUN Prize in 1977. He touched many lives in the haiku world, both in Japan and America. An article about Mr. Yamagata, that appeared in the twenty-fifth anniversary of Young Leaves, written by Patricia Macmiller, can be found here, YTHS has also honored Mr. Yamagata with his own Haiku Poets’ Page.
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Cherry Blossom Stamp
Ki no Tomonori (c.850–c.904)
the light filling the air
is so mild this spring day
only the cherry blossoms
keep falling in haste—
why is that so?
Yuki Teikei Haiku Society 