An Interview with a Haiku Educator: Charlotte Digregorio talks with regina harris baiocchi

This week, at New to Haiku, Charlotte Digregorio shares her interview with regina harris baiocchi, co-founder of Chicago’s Haiku Festival.

A Chicago native, regina harris baiocchi, founder of Haiku Festival in Chicago, writes “music and words.” Her poetry and fiction appear in many publications including, the Chicago Tribune, Obsidian, Black Fire This Time, Vol. II, dadakuku, and Rat & Rooster Journal. baiocchi’s non-fiction is published by Oxford University, Third World Press, Greenwood Press, Brass [Music] Legacy, Columbia College’s Digest, and in various CD liner notes. Her novels include Indigo Sound and Finding Déjà. baiocchi has authored three poetry books: urban haiku, blues haiku, and collage.

She writes classical, jazz, blues, and gospel music. Her compositions have been performed by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, US Army Band, Chicago Fringe Opera, and others. She is an alumna of New York University, DePaul University, and Roosevelt University.

Tell us about Haiku Festival in Chicago, your 501c3 non-profit organization.

In April 2004, I co-founded Haiku Festival with my husband, Greg Baiocchi. We offer workshops, readings, and annual competitions for poets, essayists, nōtan artists, and musicians. Haiku Festival is entering its 22^nd year serving poets of all ages, especially 8 to 18-year-olds. I was inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks, Illinois Poet Laureate for 32 years. Ms. Brooks mentored me and other budding poets. When she passed, we co-founded Haiku Festival to build on her legacy.

Tell us about your professional background and accomplishments as composer, poet, author, and musician.

I began my career teaching high school and middle school math and music. It allowed me to combine three loves: music, math, and teaching, and to practice my master’s thesis, “Music is math made audible.” During my downtime, I read and wrote music, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. I produced concerts, directed choirs, and did freelance promotions. This led to a post as director of public relations for a divinity school.

Several years into my PR career, the National Endowment for the Arts gave me a prestigious award to create new music. I took a leave of absence from PR to write music and teach part-time undergraduate humanities courses.

My compositions earned awards from 3Arts, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Arts Midwest, ASCAP, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Art Institute of Chicago, Lila Wallace Foundation, Jazz Institute of Chicago, Mellon Foundation, and Chicago Public Library Foundation. I was named composer-in-residence and resident poet for Mostly Music, the Latin School of Chicago, and various colleges and universities.

When did you become interested in haiku? Who are your favorite haiku poets?

Thanks to my 3^rd grade teacher, I fell in love with haiku, senryu, and monoku. I practice each form daily. As a rule, I gravitate toward short forms in poetry and music. I also translate poetry to music. Translations include Piano Poems (commissioned and recorded by Sarah Cahill on The Future is Female, v. 3); Piano Broadsides (commissioned by Chelsea Randall for the American Mavericks Project); and wind haiku (commissioned by Patricia Morehead and the International Double Reed Society). In Piano Poems, I translated to music Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry, Richard Wright’s haiku, and my beatitudes. Piano Broadsides are translations of three Dudley Randall poems. In wind haiku, I translated six of my urban haiku for oboe and wind instruments.

I love the concentrated ideas, irony, and energy, that haiku, senryu, and monoku contain. Micro-poetry and Fibonacci are my favorite forms. I am drawn to their mathematics, how they challenge poets to be concise, and allow space for readers’ imaginations. Tanka, haibun, and cherita attract me, too.

Haiku poets I admire include Richard Wright, Sonia Sanchez, Deborah A. Bennett, Celestine Nudanu, Adjei Agyei-Baah, Hifsa Ashraf, Alan Summers, Lenard D. Moore, and Patricia Donegan. (Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker also wrote haiku.) Makoto Ueda’s Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women, is a must-read. It includes elegant haiku by Kuroda Momoko, Uda Kiyoko, and women from the 17^th to 21^st centuries. Of course, Basho’s haiku is vital.

Why did you choose to focus on bringing haiku to the schools?

I take haiku into schools because they are exciting and deceptively easy. Kids love haiku’s brevity. I enjoy helping kids discover literary devices such as metaphor and irony, and the art of rewriting. Haiku allows students to compete on a level playing field. Students are limited to 3 lines of 5/7/5 syllables, but may choose any topic.

Purists (“haiku police”) argue that haiku are 5/7/5 nature poems with irony (or a turn). We accept student haiku and senryu. We clarify that 5/7/5 is a must only in the context of our program. We introduce students to haiku with varied syllables, line, and word counts. We suggest that haiku is about nature and that senryu is about human nature. Students write about everything from nature, human nature, sports, video games, pets, anime, BFFs, teachers, and bullies, among other topics.

Haiku Festival’s mission is to “celebrate youth through poetry and promote literacy.” We offer free workshops and readings for poets of all ages. We give cash awards to students for haiku and senryu, nōtan, and essays on Why Poetry Matters.

How do you interest schools to teach haiku and how do you instruct teachers?

Haiku Festival offers lesson plans for teachers. Free lesson plans and workshops are designed to put teachers at ease who are uncomfortable teaching poetry. Many teachers make haiku part of their Language Arts curriculum. They encourage students to participate in Haiku Festival activities and invite us to their classroom to reinforce their lessons.

Tell us about your annual awards program.

Haiku Festival issues awards and gifts to students, teachers, and schools. Our annual awards program is the last Saturday in April (National Poetry Month) at Harold Washington Library Auditorium in Chicago. In our 21 years, about 40,000 student-poets, 200 essayists, 150 nōtan artists, and performers (including taiko drummers, pianists, cellists, violinists, dancers) have participated in Haiku Festival. The average awards’ program features about 50 poets, 20 essayists, 25 nōtan artists, 10 performers, and 75 teachers from 35 schools. Annual competitions attract about 2,000 student-poets from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, California, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Ghana, China, Korea, and Japan.

Our guest poets have included Illinois Poet Laureate Angela Jackson; Sonia Sanchez; Li-Young Lee; Chris Abani; Madison, Wisconsin Poet Laureate Angie Trudell Vasquez; Dublin, California Poet Laureate James Morehead; LaPorte, Indiana Poet Laureate Valerie Wallace; John O’Connor; Charlotte Digregorio; Khari B; Guillermo Delgado; Leslie Reese; and Janice Harrington.

Does your annual awards program take you a full year to organize?

Haiku Festival’s annual awards programs take eight to ten months to organize. Most of our work coincides with the August to May academic calendar. Haiku, essays, and nōtan are selected by six to eight judges. Another six to eight volunteers keep us humming.

Tell us about the attractive and artistic anthologies of students’ haiku you’ve produced.

In April 2014, we published Haiku Festival’s 10th Anniversary Anthology, and in April 2024, Haiku Festival’s 20th Anniversary Anthology. Each volume sells for $5 and features original haiku, nōtan, and essays created by 8 to 18-year-olds.

How has your organization thrived for so many years?

It is by the grace of God, dedicated judges, IT staff, and volunteers that Haiku Festival is poised to celebrate 22 years. Poets, artists, essayists, parents, teachers, and donors support us through generous gifts of time, talent, and treasures. The City of Chicago, Chicago Public Library Foundation, Chicago Poetry Committee, and Harold Washington Library give vital, in-kind gifts. Known and anonymous donors support Haiku Festival through unsolicited gifts and our appeals.

What are your goals for your organization in the next five years?

My dream is to mentor successors so that Haiku Festival thrives forever.

These are three of baiocchi’s favorite haiku and senryu that she’s written:

suspenseful music
the composer
has an alibi

inside a glass jar
fireflies and grasshoppers
uncover my truth

ivory chopsticks
wafting from open windows
sweet and sour notes

We thank regina harris baiocchi for the interview. Her music and haiku were featured in a 2022 film, Tuning Piano, as part of THF’s HaikuLife Film Festival. You can watch the video here.

Learn all about baiocchi’s Haiku Festival at www.HaikuFest.com or by contacting her at: [email protected]

Interviewer Charlotte Digregorio, a retired professor of languages and writing, is the author of nine books, including: Wondrous Instruction and Advice from Global Poets: How to Write and Publish Moving Poems and Books and Publicize Like a Pro; Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All; Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing; and six other award-winning books. She writes sixteen poetic forms, has won eighty-two poetry awards, and was nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. She was honored by the Governor of Illinois for her decades of achievements in the literary arts. Digregorio translates poetry books from Italian into English; and her traveling, illustrated poetry show has been featured at numerous U.S. libraries, including the Chicago Public Library, and hospitals, convention centers, restaurants, park districts, and museums/galleries. She is a writer-in-residence at universities; judges international writing contests; and teaches poetry in the public schools. She hosted a radio poetry program on public broadcasting, and was Second Vice President of the Haiku Society of America. Her top-ranked poetry blog, www.charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com, features the work of writers from sixty-one countries with The Daily Haiku. In 2014, she authored Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, recognized for haiku instruction. Her award-winning titles include two Writer’s Digest Book Club Featured Selections, and many of her trade books are adopted as university texts and supplemental texts.

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