Millikin University Haiku Anthology

Dr. Randy Brooks has taught haiku courses, the Global Haiku Tradition and Haiku Writing Roundtable, at Millikin since 1998. The Millikin University Haiku Anthology is a collection of the best of the best haiku by current and former undergraduate students at Millikin University. The anthology includes award-winning haiku and haiku previously published in a wide range of literary journals. It also features new haiku from the Millikin haiku community through an open submissions process.

See a daily sample of the haiku in the anthology at Haiku of the Day at the Bronze Man Books web site.

The Millikin University Haiku Anthology provides a much-needed collection of contemporary English-language haiku for use in secondary and college level classrooms. While students of all ages enjoy contemporary haiku, Bronze Man Books believes that the haiku published in this anthology resonate with high school and college-age students attempting to learn more about the English-language haiku.

The Millikin University Haiku Anthology is the natural consequence of an ongoing celebration of the art of reading and writing haiku at Millikin University over the last 10 years. The haiku in this collection have been born as selected favorites by a variety of readers. Initially, the student writer selected his or her own haiku attempts to be considered for competition, then the best of their attempts were placed into anonymous kukai, where students in classes selected favorites. At the end of the semester, each student writer created a small collection of personal favorites to share with others. And at the end of each semester, I selected a few of the best of each student s haiku to be added to the Millikin University Haiku web site. As evident from the acknowledgements page, editors in the haiku community have selected many of these student haiku to be published in their journals and anthologies. Finally, the editors of this collection read through all of the known and submitted haiku by Millikin University students and alumni to nominate about 1,800 possible haiku for the anthology. All nominated haiku were put into an anonymous alphabetical first-line order, so that the editors could have a year-long final kukai for this anthology seeking out those haiku that all four editors could say yes, this haiku needs to be in the collection.

Now, we invite readers to find favorites and to enjoy the art of reading the haiku available in this collection. We invite you to open the gift of insight, feeling, and perception offered by each haiku in the Millikin University Haiku Anthology. Come, open up the haiku inside, and join in the art of reading haiku. Each haiku in this collection awaits your imagined response, anticipates your associations and memories, and hopes you fulfill its promise of insight and significance. Which haiku will come alive and be born though your reading? In addition to reading haiku, the editors hope that you will be motivated to write a haiku to be completed when a reader chooses it as a favorite. The editors invite you to become a co-creator of haiku through the art of reading and writing haiku. We invite you to join in the ongoing celebration of the gift of haiku.

Dr. Randy Brooks
Millikin University
Decatur, Illinois
June 18, 2008

Editorial Team: Dr. Randy Brooks, Emily Evans (alumni editor), Rick Bearce (student editor), and Melanie McLay (student editor)

Dr. Randy Brooks directs the writing major at Millikin University, with an emphasis on student immersion into communities of writers. He and his wife, Shirley Brooks, are co-editors and publishers of Brooks Books and Mayfly, a haiku magazine. He is on the boards of the American Haiku Archive and the Haiku Society of America and serves as web editor for Modern Haiku magazine. He enjoys immersing students into the art of reading, writing and studying the genre of haiku and related haikai traditions.

Emily Evans ( 05) graduated with a degree in Music Business. She returned to her hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, to pursue a Master s Degree in teaching language arts. She gets her best haiku ideas while riding her bicycle in horrendous weather conditions.

Rick Bearce ('08) just graduated with a degree in Physics.

Melanie McLay ('09) is a music education major.