PORT TOWNSEND — The Northwind Reading Series will present an evening devoted to haiku poetry this Thursday at the Northwind Arts Center, 701 Water St.
Christopher Herold, Margaret McGee, Norman Schaefer, Carmi Soifer and Karma Tenzing Wangchuk — local writers who use the haiku form to explore personal landscapes — will partake in the reading at 7 p.m.
The suggested donation is $3 to $5 with proceeds to support the nonprofit Northwind center.
The writers are a diverse bunch.
Herold, a Zen practitioner and lay monk, has served as president of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, guided numerous workshops and co-organized the Haiku North America Conference at Fort Worden State Park in 2005.
McGee, a technical writer at 1Energy Systems, is author of books including Stumbling Toward God, Sacred Attention and Haiku — The Sacred Art: A Spiritual Practice in Three Lines.
Schaefer is also an author, with two poetry collections, The Sunny Top of California and Fool’s Gold.
Soifer is a poet with haikus published in Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest and the anthologies Dreams Wander On, The Temple Bell Stops and The Sacred in Contemporary Haiku. While artist-in-residence at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, she wrote the book Stories Only Stones Can Tell.
Wangchuk has published several collections of haiku and other short poetic forms, most recently 2014’s Open Door: Love Poems (2014). His chapbook Shelter | Street: Haiku & Senryu (Minotaur Press) won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for 2011.
For more about the Northwind Reading Series and other activities at the center, see www.northwindarts.org or phone series organizer Bill Mawhinney at 360-302-1159.
