River’s Edge Yoga and Alexandria Poet Laureate Zeina Azzam are delighted to announce that they have received funding for a Haiku Project through the City of Alexandria’s Office of the Arts Business and Arts Collaborative Grant. They are working in collaboration with the Old Town North Community Partnership to develop and implement a public haiku program that involves and benefits Alexandria’s community.

“I have been hoping to bring this kind of haiku experience to Alexandria, and the grant allows us to join forces and make these creative impulses a reality,” says Azzam. Margaret Townsend, owner and director of River’s Edge Yoga, adds, “The idea of working together to further the arts in our City, especially in Old Town North, is wonderful. I am excited to partner with Zeina to reach out to our community with the art of haiku.”

This multi-pronged project starts with two workshops for Alexandria residents that introduce the art of haiku, one for adults including students in grades 9-12, and one for students in grades 4-8. They are held at James M. Duncan Branch Library in Del Ray on May 28 and the presenter is award-winning haiku poet Abigail Friedman. A haiku contest will follow for Alexandria residents to submit their work according to specific age categories (elementary and middle school; high school; and adult). A jury of experts will decide on the winners.

Winning haiku will be printed on signboards and placed in four different areas of Alexandria for a period of time, so that community members can enjoy the poems as they go about their daily lives. The placement of the haiku placards is intended to foster a feeling that poetry is part of the community. A special event will feature the winners of the contest as well as other haiku writers; it will serve as a celebration of their literary accomplishments and a way to hear each other’s haiku in a nurturing and inviting environment. Finally, Zeina Azzam will be gathering many of the haiku into a booklet that she will edit and publish as a culmination of the Haiku Project. This tangible and lovely record of the haiku experience can be disseminated widely way beyond the life of the project itself.

Through this endeavor, Azzam aims to foster an appreciation of haiku, and poetry in general. She and Townsend feel that by bringing haiku to the neighborhoods in Alexandria, such public cultural expression will enrich the artistic sensibilities of Alexandrians. “Reading and writing haiku about nature, interpersonal connections, and many other subjects that matter to us develops our sense of art, creativity, wonder, and interconnectedness,” says Azzam.