Poetry of haiku teacher Christopher Herold

Christopher Herold is a teacher, a haiku poet, the founding editor of The Heron's Nest (a monthly Web and hard-copy haiku journal), and a Zen practitioner.

In an essay in Modern Haiku, Cor Van Den Heuvel named Christopher Herold as one of the pillars of the development of haiku creativity in North America. This is how Van Den Heuvel introduces our teacher and his haiku sensibility:

"This poet likes to go off suddenly into the wilderness on camping trips. He has written haiku while on hikes in the Pinnacles National Monument and along trails in the Sierra Nevada. Herold's haiku are less subjective, less laden, or graced, with obvious spiritual messages than those of some other spiritually oriented poets ... Herold looks closely at small things."

In 2004, a few poets were privileged to attend the Pescadero Haiku Weekend Workshop with Christopher Herold.

Major collections:

A Path in the Garden (2000).
Inside Out (2010).

The Heron's Nest

Christopher founded and was editor-in-chief of the haiku journal The Heron's Nest.

To read and subscribe to The Heron's Nest, "where tradition and innovation meet ... and complement each other", see www.theheronsnest.com.

Inside Out (2010)

In 2010, Red Moon Press published Christopher Herold's Inside Out, a möbius strip of a book that shows that the interior is the outside as well as the inside. And vice versa.

As of 2010, it can be ordered for $12 + shipping & handling ($3 in the U.S.A, $4 in Canada or Mexico, $5 elsewhere). Please make your check out to Christopher Herold, and mail it to:

816 Taft Street,
Port Townsend, WA
98368

Includes:

"Introduction" by David Paul Mena.
"Preface" by Christopher Herold.
146 haiku and senryu by Christopher Herold. While 30 of the haiku are new to this collection, the others have appeared in 13 journals and 15 anthologies. They have also been published among the winners of 13 haiku contests.

Exquisite poetry. Highly commended.

A Path in the Garden (2000)

In 2000, Katsura Press published Christopher Herold's A Path in the Garden. It was a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award Winner.

As of 2004, it can be ordered for a total of $16.95 ($14.95 plus $2.00 for shipping and handling). Please make your check out to Christopher Herold, and mail it to:

816 Taft Street,
Port Townsend, WA
98368

Some of my [JZ's] favorites, to commend this delicious book to you:

shovel handle dark with earth from my hands cloud shadow long enough to close the poppies winter chill -- darkness in the hole I dug for a bare-root rose just a minnow -- the granite mountain wobbles on the lake waterfall... over the edge summer clouds three translations of the same breeze pine... oak... cottonwood moonrise... redwoods slowly sprout from the mountain's shadow

The book's beautiful watercolors were painted by Ruth Yarrow.

Other Books on Haiku

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa edited by Robert Hass. The past-poet laureate of the U.S.A has compiled this enthralling collection of his own essays in which he summarizes the lives of three masters and inventors of the haiku tradition in Japan, and presents the lives, the prose, and 300 of the poems of:

Matsuo Basho (1644-94), the ascetic and seeker,
Yosa Buson (1716-83), the artist, and
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), the humanist.

The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World by William J. Higginson.

Books of Poetry Form.

Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics.

How to Write Poetry.

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