Haiku as World Literature

The Symposium will take place
October 12, 2017 from 8:00AM - 5:00PM at
Barristers Hall, Sumner M. Redstone Building,
Boston University Campus, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215

The Haiku Circle will take place
October 13, 2017 from 11:00AM - 1:00PM at
The Pardee School, 121 Bay State Road,
Boston, MA 02215

This symposium marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the haiku poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Despite spending the last seven years of his short life immobilized by tuberculosis, Shiki contributed more than any other poet to the haiku genre’s emergence as a globe-trotting literary form. Scholars and poets working on haiku in Japanese, English, Persian, Chinese, and Spanish will share their work on Shiki and on the poetics of haiku in its global dimensions. We will also celebrate the recent digitization on the “Open BU” archive of 145 back issues of the Shiki kaishi: the journal of the Matsuyama Shiki Society, a treasure trove of original research on Shiki and his circle written by the Society’s members.

Click here to view the full symposium schedule

Because the best way to appreciate haiku is to write one yourself, we will reconvene at the Pardee School on Friday, October 13 for a Haiku Circle, led by Nanae Tamura of the Matsuyama Shiki Society.