“Haibun: Where Prose and Poetry Meet (and Dance and Fight and Fuck, etc.)”
Saturday, May 28
3 pm – 4 pm
As part of your festival pass, or $20
Haibun is an old Japanese literary form that pairs prose with poetry: a block of narration, then a quick vivid haiku. The two elements create tension, energy, and space on the page—endless possibilities and excitement! In this workshop we’ll put pencil to paper and compose our own experimental haibun. We’ll also look at examples from the Japanese tradition and contemporary North American authors, and discuss how haibun can be utilized in travel writing, science writing, memoir, and other genres. Poets, prose writers, avid readers… all are welcome and none ought to feel intimidated. Mostly, we’re going to mess around and get inspired. To be held outside in the sunshine, weather permitting.
Leath Tonino has been a full-time freelance writer since 2011. He is the author of The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures and The West Will Swallow You and numerous articles and essays in the Sun, the Progressive, Tricycle, Outside, Orion, Men’s Journal, Sierra, and the Utne Reader. He is the recipient of a Colorado College Award in Literature, a Bread Loaf scholarship, an Awesome Foundation grant, and two gold medals from the International Regional Magazine Association. He is a poetry editor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and has worked as a wildlife biologist in Arizona, a blueberry farmer in New Jersey, and a snow shoveler in Antarctica. He lives in northern Vermont.