Who’s in Charge Here?
This site is run by Michael Dylan Welch, aka Captain Haiku. He’s been vice president of the Haiku Society of America for many years, is cofounder of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, and is a cofounder and director of the Haiku North America conference (a nonprofit corporation, with its biennial conference held most recently in Cincinnati, Ohio in June/July of 2023, on Zoom in October of 2021, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in August of 2019, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in September of 2017, in Schenectady, New York in October of 2015, aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California in August of 2013, and in Seattle, Washington in August of 2011). He is also web manager for Haiku Northwest, for which he also directs the annual Seabeck Haiku Getaway. He is also founder (in 2000), president, and web manager for the Tanka Society of America. Michael edited the haiku journal Woodnotes from 1989 to 1997, and then Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem, and more recently First Frost. So he takes haiku pretty seriously—even when he sometimes has some fun with it. Michael also served two terms as poet laureate for Redmond, Washington, where he also curates SoulFood Poetry Night and monthly readings for the Redmond Association of Spokenword (of which he is also president), and founded and directed the annual Poets in the Park festival until the pandemic said otherwise. He has published thousands of his haiku in hundreds of journals and anthologies (including three Norton anthologies), won and judged numerous haiku contests, and has published dozens of books of haiku, translations, and anthologies. His work has been translated into at least twenty different languages, and one of his translations from the Japanese (done with Emiko Miyashita) appeared on the back of 150,000,000 United States postage stamps in 2012. In 2013, he was keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association annual convention in Tokyo. For more information about the captain, please visit Graceguts.com and click the Bio and Books links. To see some of his haiku, visit the site and click the Haiku and Senryu link, or visit “Traces of Snow” to see selected poems written for NaHaiWriMo in 2011. In 2017, Press Here also published Jumble Box: Haiku and Senryu from National Haiku Writing Month, featuring poems from February 2017. See also Michael’s Meet the Prompter mini-interview.
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This site, the “No 5-7-5” logo, National Haiku Writing Month, NaHaiWriMo, and derivations such as International Haiku Writing Month, InHaiWriMo, and International Haiku Writing Year, copyright © 2010–2024 by Michael Dylan Welch.