Haiku Canada outsiders and insiders

 
Chris, it was really my own curiosity, asking about Eric Amann's memoir -- in case I, a slow reader, might actually be able to read it in a visit to Special Collections. So, no worries about not including that level of detail.

From what I can tell, Eric and Anna Vakar were both rather 'outsiders,' which is why they clicked on some level, if only for a short time.

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Hi Again Vicki,

It's quite a slight volume, and I'm sure you could read it in an hour or two in a relaxing afternoon in the archives  ;  )

Yes, I'm sure Eric thought of himself as an outsider. While cleaning dinner dishes, I did some further reminiscing about Eric and his involvement with haiku. In his memoir The House on Fountain Street the reader can see why this would be so - he was raised by "rough", working class New Canadians, and he would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that group. He was an intellectual swan in a flock of very supportive adult ducks. My image of his early editorship of Haiku mag is of a lonely, highly intelligent and deeply philosophical person looking for soul connections in the strange universe of NYC. The uniqueness of haiku, its esoteric nature in the still staid Amerikan culture of the early 1960s, would explain its appeal to the young med student/doctor.

It's always dangerous describing someone's looks, but Eric was noticeably different looking. When I finally met him at what I consider the founding meeting of HC circa 1977/78, I thought he looked gnomish or elvin. I bet he was teased a lot in his youth for his immigrant background, his high intelligence, sensitivity and his unusual looks. Definitely the makings of an "outsider" personality.

Regarding the Haiku Society of Canada and it's morphing into Haiku Canada, I can see a profound difference in the personalities of Eric and George Swede and their styles of leadership. Eric the quiet, self-effacing outsider who seemed to want our haiku community to be low key and casually social and individualist. After the initial meeting in Eric's apartment near The Danforth in Toronto, our next gatherings were casual restaurant dinners and get-togethers. I think of George Swede as the flip side of Eric's casualness - the corporate and promotional leader. Of course it took both aspects and the contributions of many, many other haijin to form HC. It bugs me that the founding of HC is described in its online home page as consisting of Eric, George and Betty Drevniok. There were a LOT of other haijin involved! I suspect that the major personality differences between Eric and George caused Eric to move on from George's "corporate" version of HC. After a lot of initial commitment to developing HC, I also became absorbed in my own poetry and writing projects, including founding Unfinished Monument Press and coordinating the Main Street Library poetry readings. In the longer view it took both these competing styles of leadership, and it's likely that without George's more organized and formal leadership style, HC would probably not still exist some 45 years after its founding and we wouldn't be corresponding today about  archival projects!

Haiku Canada Archives//Dr. Eric Amann, godfather of Canadian haiku

 
I've resumed fishing through old boxes, drawers, and shelves to finally start donating again to the Haiku Canada Archives now that they've found an official home with the Univ. of Victoria library. It's part of my ongoing project to declutter my small house and to get "important" materials into various archives. Having the cancer operation has reinforced my goal to get as much of this stuff into good homes while I'm still above ground. I don't know anyone locally who'd know how to do this once I'm gone, and rare items would likely end up in the recycling bin or worse, the local landfill.  

part of email from Vicki McCullough, a member of the Haiku Canada archives committee and current archivist on the Haiku Canada executive:  

Thank you for adding the Cafe Haiku link and that chunk of your story and haiku history. So glad to see your mention of Eric Amann in there -- and the note in your email that Eric Amann has an autobiography that you'll send anon. He didn't hang around on the haiku scene as George Swede has, so I've wondered what we might pull in about him. Other than, well, I have a fat file of correspondence between Eric and Anna Vakar and a few other slimmer files to do with the brief period  Anna was an editorial consultant on Cicada. Now that I've received all I'm going to get from Anna's estate and have done some browsing through the last arrivals, I've decided to start by identifying what is unquestionably most eligible for the Haiku Canada Collection at UVic Library Special Collections -- and that would be these aforementioned files. Then I'll ripple out from there, assessing significance until it's (hopefully) clear what is not eligible to be sent: that is, what does not meaningfully fit the haiku-and-related-forms mandate. I'm imagining a grey area where I'm not sure and will seek guidance from the UVic librarians.

 part of my reply to Vicki about Eric Amann:

IMHO Eric Amann was one of the most important English language haijin to date. His 1960s mag Haiku literally changed the form and to a degree the content of modern English haiku. The other mags of that period, and I subscribed to and was published in most, if not all of them, were strictly 5-7-5 in form and limited in content. The "rules" of haiku back then were strict - haiku were to be about nature, not people, although gradually haijin became aware of senryu, and over many decades the distinction seems to have blurred.

Eric critiqued my early attempts at haiku in his preferred non 5-7-5 form, and after some practising he began publishing my haiku as exemplars of non 5-7-5. The other small haiku mags of that period followed Eric's lead with Haiku as I recall. I was pleased and very surprised when I recently found one of my first acceptance notes from Eric on a torn piece of paper!

The "thread in haiku" piece skims over my personal history, and explains how for several years I was still occasionally writing, and even managing to publish two small chapbooks of haiku (I'd never heard of chapbooks in 1969, I just wanted a collection of my haiku gathered in one place.) After living in the Eel Pie Island commune and living on the streets and traveling in Europe, I returned to Canada in 1972. It was a pleasant surprise to be invited to what I consider to be the founding meeting of what became Haiku Canada at Eric's apartment in east end Toronto circa 1976 or 77. I believe I've posted a description of that meeting somewhere on my blog, and if I find it I'll forward it to you.