We are just back from our Haiku Walking in Japan journey and I have to say it definitely surpassed all our expectations. Our host company Walk Japan provided a tailored itinerary which allowed for our daily workshops and readings while providing a varied timetable of travel, sightseeing, cultural activities, traditional accomodation and delicious food.  See some of our pics here.

When I conceived this idea to follow the footsteps of Basho in Japan with writers and artists, I simply wanted to encourage this haiku way of looking at things — bringing it all down from the macro into the micro, (or even vice versa), allowing all your anxieties and distractions to dissolve in the wonderment of ‘just isness’. If we ended up writing a few good haiku along the way, well and good, if we could bring something of this approach into our creative projects when we came home, even better.

I admire any writer, poet or artist who is able to capture a moment honestly, simply and succinctly, and surely that is what haiku is all about. But when you read about all the rules that have come and gone, all the different schools of haiku, all the interesting ways it has developed and changed over different eras and in different cultures from earliest times to modern day, you wonder how any haiku poet is still able to put pen to paper. Read more in our haiku mag here

We will go again in Nov 2017, details will be available soon!