Events

Kobayashi Issa: Dancing Haiku Heartfelt thanks to Iliyana Stoyanova for the invitation, trust and freedom to create an opportunity for haiku sharing for the 2023 Winter Gathering. What emerged was the artistic joy of sharing Kobayashi Issa’s: Dancing Haiku as inspiration for participants to write their […]

  The BHS Spring Gathering 2023 took place on Zoom on Saturday, 3 June at 4pm-7pm UK time. Over 40 BHS members from different countries joined in. The event had two parts with a short tea/coffee break between them. Part 1: Articulation of the Single Line […]

  Images, Haiku and the Spirit workshop – 5 February 2023 The Images, Haiku and the Spirit Zoom workshop presented a slideshow of nature photographs as sources of inspiration and/or jumping off points for haiku writing and sharing. The session opened with 28 people and a […]

On 7 December 2022 BHS members Claire Chatelet, Isabel Del Rio and Iliyana Stoyanova attended the fifth edition of the Naviar Haiku Fest, an evening of music and poetry reading at Café Oto in London. The event featured performances by members and friends of Naviar, working […]

  The BHS AGM and Winter Gathering took place on Saturday the 26th November 2022 via Zoom. Participants who wanted to perform at the event were asked to provide David Bingham with up to 3 haiku or 3 tanka or a short haibun (maximum length 60 […]

The BHS Spring Gathering took place on 14th May 2022 by Zoom. It was a well-attended event with 30 plus members from both the UK and abroad. David Bingham led the first session which was a sharing of ‘mini-haibun’ that had been sent in by BHS […]

  British Haiku Society AGM and Winter Gathering by Zoom, Saturday, 20th November 2021   BHS AGM   The BHS AGM was a short meeting (approx. 20 minutes). Before the BHS AGM all BHS Members were sent the relevant documents and were given the opportunity to […]

  Book launch and tanka performance On 28 August 2021, the British Haiku Society organised a book launch, on Zoom, of Kala Ramesh’s book ‘the forest i know’- a gathering of tanka verses, published by HarperCollins India. There were several friends, well-wishers, and admirers of Kala’s […]

  On Sunday, 18 July 2021 David Bingham and Iliyana Stoyanova led a free haiku workshop for the biggest Japanese festival in UK, Hyper Japan. In this workshop 25 participants from Argentina, Canada, Greece, India, UK, and USA explored: the characteristics of good contemporary haiku and […]

  BHS Spring Gathering on 5th and 6th June 2021 Last year the BHS marked its 30th anniversary but due to the lockdown we had to cancel our planned Spring Gathering in London. In order to celebrate this important milestone the BHS hosted a two-day Zoom […]

  The Dance of Haibun Workshop – 27 March 2021 This workshop was based on the way the late Ken Jones summed up haibun as ‘haiku dancing with prose‘. In relation to this, the quote by the choreographer Michael Fokine that ‘dance bears the same relationship […]

  Virtual Ginko and Haiku Sharing – 27 February 2021 Participants were asked ahead of the February 27 Zoom meeting to go outdoors and remain rooted in one spot and to draft haiku using all their physical senses and take note of what they could see […]

On Saturday, 12 December 2020 the British Haiku Society hosted a special haiku sharing session dedicated to the memory of David Cobb (1926-2020). Over 30 participants at the meeting presented two types of haiku: ·        a haiku written by David Cobb ·        a haiku from the […]

  BHS Haiku workshop – 28 November 2020 Alan Summers and Karen Hoy offered to host a live Zoom haiku workshop, on Saturday November 28th, from 10.30 am for two hours, for fellow BHS members. Participants were invited to bring along a haiku to read, and […]

    BHS AGM/Winter Gathering Conway Hall, London – 23 November 2019 The day started off with refreshments, where members reacquainted themselves with old friends and met new ones. In total, 39 members were in attendance on the day. Long-standing BHS member Diana Webb led a […]

International Haiku Conference – St Albans, UK (31 May – 2 June 2019)   The BHS was the sponsor and organizer of an International Haiku Conference which took place at the Maltings Arts Theatre in St Albans, UK on the weekend of Friday, 31 May to Sunday […]

  Launch of the Bulgarian/English collaborative haiku anthology ‘Beyond Words/Отвъд думите’ in Sofia, Bulgaria – 18 December 2018   David Bingham and I spent two wonderful days in Sofia with our good friend and guide Iliyana Stoyanova. After a two hour and forty-five-minute flight from Gatwick, […]

    BHS Winter Gathering and AGM 2018 Conway Hall, London   At the BHS Annual General Meeting on 17th November 2018 in London results of the biennial election were announced. The Management Committee for 2019-21 is: President, Colin Blundell; General Secretary, Susan Lee Kerr; Treasurer, Paul […]

Art and Eastern Teachings Interactive workshop (27 September 2018, 3.30-6pm at Brookfield Science Building, Cork University) Are Far Eastern teachings too far from us? How can we use their practices in our everyday life? How can they inspire our creativity? Join us to learn some of the […]

Free Verse – The Poetry Book & Magazine Fair: Saturday 22 September 2018, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm  As part of the BHS on-going outreach programme, and for the 4th year running we had a table at the new venue, Senate House, London, of ‘Free Verse, […]

  On 8 August 2018 the BHS had its third haiku event in partnership with Wagamama. The event was held in the newly opened restaurant in Covent Garden, London and we would like to thank Jas Ayling (regional marketing manager) and Franz Gaspari (restaurant manager) for […]

2 August 2018   Haiku contest for the opening of Wagamama Chelmsford  This summer, the British Haiku Society was approached by Wagamama to assist them with a series of restaurant openings across England. As a new and eager member, I volunteered to help with the Chelmsford […]

12 June 2018  I was very kindly invited by The British Haiku Society to attend the opening evening event at Wagamama, a Japanese influenced restaurant in Liverpool. As soon as I entered Wagamama I knew I had entered an oasis of calm and tranquility with a […]

  BHS SPRING GATHERING, SATURDAY 19 MAY 2018 11 AM – 5 PM KENSINGTON CENTRAL LIBRARY, 12 PHILLIMORE WALK, KENSINGTON This year the BHS Spring Gathering took place in the Meeting Room at the Kensington Central Library. There were four main parts to the day: (1) […]

    On Saturday 2 December 2017 nearly 30 BHS members met for the BHS Winter Gathering and AGM at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. In the morning we had the AGM and a wonderful workshop led by Diana Webb – Having Fun with […]

On the 30th of September 2017 for the third year running, the BHS had a table at the Poetry Book Fair at Conway Hall, London. The Fair was not as busy as last year, however thanks to the BBC documentary quite a few people stopped to […]

On 2nd July 2017, thirteen members of the London Haiku Group ran by Coordinator, Mark Gilfillan assembled for a meeting at the Royal Festival Hall. Each person brought along six poems for critiquing. A few months earlier it was agreed that the Group would produce an […]

BHS SPRING GATHERING, SATURDAY 10 JUNE 2017 11 AM – 5 PM ST DENYS HALL, CHURCH STREET, CHISWICK This year the Spring Gathering of the BHS took place in the St. Denys Hall which is close to the River Thames in Chiswick. There were three parts […]

Conway Hall, London – 17 September 2016   As part of “The British Haiku Society” outreach programme, and for the second year running, we had a table at the “Poetry Book Fair” in Conway Hall, London.   Again all of us wore our BHS T-shirts and […]

  David Bingham started the day introducing a session about organising work into sequences. Participants were given some examples of haiku and asked to think about the interesting question of what might follow, some example sequences were also provided. Then after an introduction to Haiku sets […]

BHS handed out 108 haiku to complete strangers on London’s Southbank on Saturday 16 April 2016 to celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day the next day. Thanks to Iliyana Stoyanova we learned of the declaration of the day – 17 April for 17 syllables. And thanks to […]

  The Ohanami Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria takes place in April every year. It is organized by the Bulgarian Haiku Union under the patronage of the Japanese Embassy in Bulgaria, courtesy of the Club “Friends of Japan.” There are haiku readings, ginko, ikebana, martial arts demonstrations […]

Winter Gathering/AGM – 14 November 2015   At around 10:15am on a drizzly Saturday morning, the great and the good of the British haiku world converged on Conway Hall, Holborn in London, from near and far to attend the Society’s Winter Gathering/AGM and also to celebrate […]

On the evening of Thursday 9th May a gathering took place of twenty-two members of The British Haiku Society, L’Association Francaphone de Haiku, L’Association des Auteurs de Haibun and Kukai Paris at the South Cliff Hotel in Folkestone. Click here for details

BHS are supporting an exhibition of paintings which illustrate haiku by the artist Carolina Khouri. She has also produced a book containing the haiku and the accompanying paintings. Sales from the book are going to the Japanese tsunami disaster appeal.

In Ludlow, Shropshire. BHS Members and invited guest speakers only.

BHS Annual General Meeting and Winter Gathering took place on Saturday, Nov 26th. There were lots of positive ideas offered by BHS members for the committee to take up in the near future and talks and sessions by Susan Lee Kerr, David Cobb and Colin Blundell.

The British Haiku Society celebrated its 20th anniversary with an event at Daiwa House.

We gathered at one o’clock at Park House in Leatherhead for this 'expedition for beginners', organised by Diana Webb. There were fifteen BHS members, one ex-BHS member and sixteen other interested people, in groups designed to have an equal mix. Diana provided a very useful set of notes for everyone. This included quotations helpful in encouraging an openness to and awareness of special ‘moments’. There were also 24 haiku as examples for beginners and some extra notes on generally accepted features of what haiku should be.

An archive of reports and any accompanying illustrations from a selection of previous events.