12/17: Wordplay: Crafting Winter Holiday Haiku

Instructor: Hiromi Yoshida
Date: Tuesday, December 17
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST
Location: Zoom
Cost: Nonmember: $50; Writer/Reader Members & IPC Members: $32; Senior, Teacher, Student, Military/Veteran, Librarian: $28

This poetry class will focus on the haiku form. The “hai” syllable in the word “haiku” connotes “play,” both in the sense of drama, or theatrics, and of recreation and enjoyment, or playfulness. Since “ku” denotes “word,” or “verbal component,” we will enjoy playing around with words in our haiku crafting process. To begin this enjoyable process, we will celebrate the winter holiday season by reading seasonal haiku by the traditional Japanese masters of the form, beginning with Matsuo Bash?. Their inspiration, combined with writing prompts and activities, will lead to unique haikus that we can share with each other for constructive feedback. Our goal is to produce some verses that can be inscribed on cards to celebrate the winter holiday season.

About the instructor:

Hiromi Yoshida is the author of two full-length poetry collections and five poetry chapbooks. She is the editor of Stormwash: Environmental Poems (The Grind Stone, April 2024), an anthology featuring 40 poets, primarily from the Midwest. Her work has been included in the INverse Poetry Archive, and nominated for various awards. She serves as a poetry reader for Flying Island Journal, and coordinates the Last Sunday Poetry reading series for the Writers Guild at Bloomington. Winner of the Head-to-Head Haiku Battle at Bloomington’s 2022 Granfalloon Festival, she released Icarus Hieroglyph, a chapbook of acrostics and haikus, through The Grind Stone in May 2023.

 

Course Instructor: Tina Tocco

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. As a writer for both children and adults, her work has appeared in kiddie magazines, such as Highlights, Cricket, Humpty Dumpty, AppleSeeds, and Odyssey, and in literary journals, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Crab Creek Review, Passages North, Potomac Review, Portland Review, Sou’wester, and Italian Americana. Tina’s writing has also been featured in Wild Things: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008), The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press, 2019), Best Nonfiction Food (Woodhall Press, 2020), and other anthologies. A runner-up for the SCBWI’s Work-in-Progress Grant, Tina was also an honorable mention in the River Styx Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest and a finalist in CALYX’s Flash Fiction Contest. Her interview on flash and the craft of writing, “No Wasted Words,” appears in Roanoke Review. In 2021, she was a reader-in-residence for flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly. Tina earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. She has taught adults and kids for Hugo House, GrubStreet, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Arts Escape, Kids Short Story Connection, the SCBWI, and other organizations.

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