Saturday, September 9th, 12:00 p.m.

FREE! Via Zoom
For tickets visit Eventbrite

The 9th Annual San José Poetry Festival presents Yuki Teikei Haiku Society's Roger Abe, Linda Papanicolaou and Carol Steele.

This is Day Three of our four-day festival! Check out the complete list of events that are part of the 9th Annual San José Poetry Festival! Our festival pass will get you into all live events and online events. Visit bit.ly/pcsjtix.

This event is free to all.

The Yuki Teikei Haiku Society (YTHS) was founded in San Jose, California, in 1975 by Mr. Kiyoshi Tokutomi and Mrs. Kiyoko Tokutomi. The purpose of the founders was to nourish and foster the art of writing haiku in English using the traditional guidelines developed by haiku poets in Japan. This event will feature haiku readings by YTHS members Roger Abe, Linda Papanicolaou and Carol Steele.

Roger Abe was raised on a walnut orchard in Los Gatos, California, and graduated from San José State University with a BA in English literature. He worked for 30 years as a park ranger and interpreter for the city of San José. He is an active member of Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, notably the founder and coordinator of the YTHS Spring Haiku Reading, an annual event since 1992, and served as YTHS president from 1999 to 2002; he was made dōjin in 2022. Abe’s work has appeared in YTHS and Haiku Poets of Northern California members’ anthologies and the San Francisco Bay Area Nature Guide and Saijiki (2010). He was a featured poet at the HPNC Two Autumns Reading in 2000. He resides in Morgan Hill, California.

Linda Papanicolaou, American art historian with a PhD from New York University; worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught art in New York and California schools. She discovered haiku in the 1990s and was soon immersed in the online haiku community, especially as assistant director of the World Haiku Club’s Haikumultimedia forum. Her haikai, especially haiga and other graphics, are widely published in print and online journals. She edited Haigaonline for 15 years, and worked on editing and production of other publications. Papanicolaou is a member of the Haiku Society of America, Haiku Poets of Northern California, and a dōjin in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, where she was elected president in 2022. She has participated in HPNC’s Two Autumns readings and the YTHS Tea House readings as well as led linked-verse composition sessions. She resides in Palo Alto, California.

Carol Steele bio to come.

Want more poetry? Check out the rest of the San José Poetry Festival lineup.

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COVID NOTICE: If a venue cancels, the San José Poetry Festival event will be broadcast to PCSJ’s Zoom channel. All ticket holders will receive a link to the Zoom. Refund requests for unattended individual events moved online due to a venue cancellation will be reviewed and considered.

San José Poetry Festival 2023 is presented by Poetry Center San José and is sponsored in part by: Festival and Cultural Affairs grants from the City of San José; a grant from SVCreates, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council and also supported in part by a SVCreates National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan grant; support from the offices of San José City Council Members David Cohen (D4) and Peter Ortiz (D5); Literary Arts Emergency Fund supported by the Mellon Foundation; and with support from Anne & Mark's Art Party, Applied Materials Foundation, Brandenburg Family Foundation and Silicon Valley Community Foundation. We thank Four Points by Sheraton for hotel accommodations. We would like to acknowledge and offer our deepest gratitude to past and current venues worthy of your support: Art Boutiki, Books Inc., Caravan Lounge, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, First Unitarian Church of San José, History/San José, MACLA, Mama Kin, Recycle Bookstore, Tabard Theatre, Willow Glen Public Library and Works/San José. Please support these spaces however you can. And we thank all our volunteers whose time and effort make this festival possible.