The president of the Arkansas Haiku Society was going through a difficult time in 1993.
"I needed something to take my mind off of everything. I was looking for a safe harbor," Howard Kilby says.
That's when he remembered hearing about a haiku society that just began in New York. So, he wrote them a letter and received a "warm reply." All these years later, he's still sharing his love for the Japanese style of poetry here in Hot Springs.
Monday marks International Haiku Poetry Day. To celebrate, the Hot Springs Haiku Club will take part in a meeting of poets from Arkansas and Louisiana on the second floor of the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa at 10 a.m. today.
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June Rose Dowis, the south region coordinator of the Haiku Society of America, organized the event and will make the drive from her home base of Shreveport, Louisiana, bringing several other poets with her. A number of poets from Little Rock will attend, as well.
The Arlington has also been home to the free conference, Hot Springs Haiku, held in November for the past 25 years. Drawing poets and Haiku enthusiasts from around the country and even from Japan, Canada and other nations, Kilby and the Arkansas Haiku Society have made the city one of the most significant in the South for the art form. Still, he says there is much work to do as the form of poetry remains mostly unknown among Americans.
Kilby is also the former secretary for HSA and former south region coordinator, which covers Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky.
While the Hot Springs Haiku Club was started in 2022, Kilby's connection to the art form goes back decades.
Joining the society 30 years ago in June, he points out how significant it is that his journey with Haiku has tracked alongside Hot Springs' developing relationship with their sister city Hanamaki, Japan. He was even on the first delegation to Hanamaki in 1993.
"This is a new idea," said Kilby. "Haiku has a 350-year history in Japan. It's considered a fine art. But in the United States, it's still relatively new."
Today's meetup will feature a poetry reading, haiku games and a meditative walk through the nature around the Arlington. An important principle in haiku, nature is present in a majority of traditional haiku. The Japanese concept of "ginkgo" describes a nature walk by poets.
"One of the ideas of haiku traditionally is to experience nature fully," said Kilby. "So that it becomes like a sacred experience, looking at a tree, or looking at a pond, or seeing a ripple on the pond. It's really a wonderful practice, just to change your outlook when you're living your daily life."
Kilby welcomes and encourages the community of Hot Springs to look into haiku, suggesting checking out books at the library. For more information about HSA, visit https://www.hsa-haiku.org/index.htm.