Every year on July 12, the anniversary of the founding of the American Haiku Archives in 1996, the AHA advisory board appoints an honorary curator to serve a one-year term. This curatorship carries no responsibilities and offers no financial compensation, but seeks to honor prominent poets, scholars, and translators who have had a significant impact on haiku in North America.1
Criteria for Appointing Honorary Curators1
The American Haiku Archives advisory board chooses a curator annually to serve in an honorary capacity without any obligations to the archives except to promote it in spirit, serving for one year starting from the date of July 12 (to honor the day on which the American Haiku Archives was founded in 1996). The American Haiku Archives advisory board bases its selection of honorary curators on the following criteria:
1. That the nominee be living and also be a North American, living in North America, or have had an active haiku career in North America.
2. That the nominee be primarily a haiku poet, or haiku scholar and/or translator, of significant to remarkable stature.
3. That, in addition to his or her work as a poet, scholar, and/or translator, the nominee should also have made significant national or international contributions to haiku poetry, scholarship, or leadership in English over a significant number of years or with sufficiently dramatic impact.
4. That the nominee agree to the appointment after the board makes its nomination.
5. Other factors that may affect the choice of an honorary curator may include the nominee’s age and/or health, and his or her attitude toward the archives. If a nominee has made significant contributions to the archives, or might potentially do so, this should not affect the choice of nominee, because the honorary curatorship should not be seen as a reward for making large contributions or as an enticement to make such a contribution. Instead, the honorary curatorship should be seen as recognition of outstanding national or international contributions to haiku poetry in North America.
These criteria for selection of honorary curators was adopted by the Advisory Board in 2002, although appointments of previous honorary curators also generally met with these criteria.
The list of honorary curators on the American Haiku Archives website provides links to short biographies, photos, bibliographies, and sample poems of honorary curators for the American Haiku Archives. The honorary curators whose names are colored blue in the list below are linked to Haikupedia biographical sketches as well.
Honorary Curators, American Haiku Archives, 1996–
2023–2024 Fay Aoyagi
2022–2023 Gary Hotham
2021–2022 Gerald Vizenor
2020–2021 Lenard D. Moore
2019–2020 Alexis Rotella
2018–2019 John Stevenson
2017–2018 Patricia Donegan
2016–2017 Haruo Shirane
2015–2016 Ruth Yarrow
2014–2015 Marlene Mountain
2013–2014 Charles Trumbull
2012–2013 LeRoy Gorman
2011–2012 Jerry Ball
2010–2011 Gary Snyder
2009–2010 Stephen Addiss
2008–2009 George Swede
2007–2008 H. F. Noyes
2006–2007 Hiroaki Sato
2005–2006 Francine Porad
2004–2005 Makoto Ueda
2003–2004 William J. Higginson
2002–2003 Leroy Kanterman
2001–2002 Lorraine Ellis Harr
2000–2001 Robert Spiess
1999–2000 Cor van den Heuvel
1998–1999 Jerry Kilbride
1996–1998 Elizabeth Searle Lamb
Compiled by Michael Dylan Welch
Related Haikupedia Articles
American Haiku Archives
Note
- Information in this article is taken from the American Haiku Archives website: https://www.americanhaikuarchives.org/curators/honorarycurators.html. [↩] [↩]