Thursday, July 10th, 2025, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students. General registration for Summer 2025 will open on Tuesday, May 27th at 10:00AM. 

In this workshop, we will explore the haibun, a Japanese form that combines prose and haiku, inviting writers to explore the tension between movement and stillness, narrative and image, expansion and compression. Originating in the travel writing of Matsuo Bashō, haibun invites us to navigate personal landscapes—whether external journeys or interior explorations—in ways that resist closure and invite discovery.

Through discussion, reading, and guided writing exercises, we’ll experiment with haibun as a generative practice. How can a single image reframe a passage? What happens when we let a poem leap rather than resolve? By engaging with these possibilities, we’ll explore how haibun can expand our creative practice and offer new ways of seeing and writing. We will also look at how contemporary haibun writers adapt the form in innovative ways—incorporating surrealism, fragmented narratives, and/or nontraditional haiku—to make space for new creative possibilities while preserving the form’s contemplative essence. 

This workshop is open to writers of all backgrounds. No prior experience with haibun or poetry is necessary—only curiosity and a willingness to explore the unexpected.