William J Higginson

Bio

(1938-2008) Bill Higginson authored or edited: The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku, which Booklist called “the standard work in the field”, and some 20 other books of poems and other literary works. While best known for his translations from Japanese and commentary on haiku as nature poems, he published three collections of longer poems, focusing on city life, aging and death, and family relationships. He particularly specialized in poems dealing with memories, and used memory-enhancing techniques in his teaching of writing, in schools, colleges, community centers, and other venues for some 30 years. His poems, translations, stories, and essays appeared in scores of literary journals and anthologies, and he wrote about the teaching of writing and related subjects for books ranging from The Teachers & Writers Guide to William Carlos Williams, edited by Gary Lenhart (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1998) to An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of their Art, edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes (University of Michigan, 2002). He was also greatly involved in poetry online, as writer, editor, and web master of his own site devoted to the study of collaborative linked poems in the Japanese style, Renku Home at http://renku.home.att.net