Welcome to the American Haiku Archives
2024-2025
The American Haiku Archives advisory board is pleased to announce the appointment of Terry Ann Carter as the 2024-2025 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento (www.americanhaikuarchives.org). This honor recognizes Terry Ann’s long commitment to haiku and related arts. She founded the KaDo Ottawa and Haiku Arbutus Victoria haiku groups and served for many years as president of Haiku Canada.
In addition, she has published dozens of poetry books, anthologies, and guidebooks. Three notable nonfiction books include Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teachers Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Literary Forms (Wintergreen Studios Press, 2011), Haiku in Canada: History, Poetry, Memoir (Ekstasis Editions, 2020), and Moonflowers: Pioneering Women Haiku Poets in Canada (Catkin Press, 2020). She also coedited Carpe Diem: Anthologie Canadienne du Haïku / Canadian Anthology of Haiku (with Marco Fraticelli, Les Editions David / Borealis Press, 2008) and Erotic Haiku: Of Skin on Skin (with George Swede, Black Moss Press, 2017).
Terry Ann is a longtime member of the League of Canadian Poets and her work in haiku exists firmly in the context of longer poetry, which she has published as much as she has haiku. She is also known for her musical, dance, and theatrical performances, as well as her book artistry. She chaired or cochaired five Haiku Canada conferences and two Haiku North America conferences. Terry Ann was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but lived most of her life in Canada, especially in Ottawa, where she was a music and English teacher for 34 years. After retiring in 2000, she traveled extensively and in 2012 she and her husband moved to Victoria, British Columbia. Terry Ann continues to publish her haiku and longer lyric poetry in numerous journals and anthologies and is active with teaching, readings, performances, exhibits, and other aspects of literary citizenship. Her website is https://www.terryanncarter.com/.
See more details about our 2024-2025 Honorary Curator, Terry Ann Carter.
Featured AHA Exhibits & Events:
2024-2025 Honorary Curator Zoom Reading
January 25, 2005
The American Haiku Archives (official archives of the Haiku Society of America) in a special reading by Terry Ann Carter. This Zoom event celebrated Terry Ann as the 2024–2025 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento. Terry Ann read and showed selections of her work, with appreciations by friends, followed by a Q&A session. Please join us!
American Haiku Archives Honorary Curator Reading
See the Zoom Meeting Recording
Passcode: %fZ3ua$L
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2023 Honorary Curator Presentation on Contermpoary Japanese Haiku by Fay Aoyagi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etIdxwPShaA
2022 Honorary Curator Reading
Gary Hotham - October 16, 2022 (Haiku Poets of Northern California)
2020 Honorary Curator Reading:
Lenard D. Moore - August 2, 2020
A PowerPoint Video (on the formation and history of the American Haiku Archives):
Your Haiku Archives by Michael Dylan Welch
An Interview:
Former honorary curator, Dr. Makoto Ueda
Special Exhibit:
Kiyoko & Kiyoshi Tokutomi by Patricia Machmiller
Memorial:
Dr. Kevin Starr, Former California State Librarian
About the Archives
The American Haiku Archives is the world’s largest public collection of haiku and related poetry books and papers outside Japan. This repository is housed at the California State Library in Sacramento, California, and is dedicated to preserving the history of North American haiku.
The American Haiku Archives (AHA) was originally the idea of Dr. Kevin Starr, former California state librarian, and haiku poet Jerry Kilbride. The archives took shape in 1995 and 1996 with the help of many additional volunteers and advocates, and was founded at the California State Library on July 12, 1996. At this time, the American Haiku Archives became the official archive of the Haiku Society of America. Initial major donations of books and papers came from Elizabeth Searle Lamb and from the Haiku Society of America. Since then, many other significant collections of haiku-related books, papers, and correspondence have been donated to the archives. Library archivists have meticulously catalogued and archived all donated materials using state-of-the-art archival processes so that these valuable materials will be available for generations of future haiku poets and researchers.
See featured sample haiku from the American Haiku Archives hosted by the special collection librarians: http://californiastatelibrary.tumblr.com/tagged/American-Haiku-Archives. You can see an archive of all their posts at http://californiastatelibrary.tumblr.com/archive.
The haiku archives welcomes the public through the California State Library’s California History Room, where its rare and special book collections are accessible. The American Haiku Archives also welcomes donations of books, papers, letters, and other material relating to haiku, mainly in English, but also in other languages. The California State Library is primarily located at 914 Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California, and the American Haiku Archives is housed at the Library and Courts II Building at 900 “N” Street.
We invite you to read about our honorary curators, learn how to donate to the archives, conduct research, and more. Also see our Facebook page.
An invitation to the way of haiku
“A haiku . . . is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language.”
— R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 1, page 243
