Route 9 Haiku Group is a small, exclusive local haiku group based in the Capital District of Upstate New York. It was founded in 2000 by Hilary Tann, Yu Chang, and John Stevenson and later joined by Tom Clausen and Ion Codrescu. The group meets monthly, usually in the Tai Pan restaurant in Halfmoon, N.Y., which specializes in dim sum (Chinese dumplings), and which in turn suggested the name of the group's biannual haiku journal, Upstate Dim Sum.

Tom Clausen (born Thomas Paul Clausen, August 1, 1951, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A.), staff member at the Cornell University’s A. R. Mann Library and haiku poet. Retired since 2013, Clausen has continued to curate a daily haiku feature on the library’s website. He is active in the Haiku Society of America and has been a member of the Route 9 Haiku Group since 2003. He served on the selection committee for the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards in 2016 and 2017. Several chapbooks of Clausen’s haiku and one of tanka have appeared since 1994, and more substantial haiku collections, Homework (2000) and Growing Late (2007) were published by Snapshot Press and Laughing to Myself (2015) by Free Food Press. In addition to being featured in the major haiku journals and contests, Clausen's work has appeared in more than 20 anthologies. He is the author of the Haikupedia article “Upstate Dim Sum” and lives in Ithaca, N.Y., in the house where he grew up.