debut
The October weekend of 2003. Japanese Culture and Technology Center ‘Manggha’. Cracow. International Haiku Conference – ‘With Haiku into XXI century’.
When I write this it is 2008. I kept my invitation and lecture handouts. I can still remember – like if it was yesterday – my happiness that this conference was going to take place in my city, in just a 5-minutes-walk distance from the place I used to live. I had the shortest distance to cover of all of them. Organizers came from USA, participants from all over the Poland.
Lectures, unofficial meetings, reading haiku together, exchanging experience and… volumes of verse. I was all over the place pricking up my ears, straining eyes, accepting gifts still smelling of the printing ink.
On the last day of the conference haiku contest was organized. Each of the participants was allowed to submit a single poem. Anonymous poems went to translators as the jury was Polish and American.
Cold, rainy Sunday. From behind windows sprinkled with impatient raindrops, the widely flowing river and the steep royal hill can be clearly seen…
Three poems were chosen. Each of them was honored with an evenly great prize – the publication in 'Modern Haiku. An Independent Journal of Haiku and Haiku Studies'. After a few months I received my commemorative journal issue.
chill off the river
waiting for his Marzanna
a lone fisherman