Owen Bullock – Gendai Haiku as a Progressive Force: What I learnt in Japan on the Outside Studies Program

Abstract  In the first half of 2025, I was fortunate enough to conduct research on the Outside Studies Program towards completion of an academic textbook, How to Write Haiku, to be published by Bloomsbury Press. This included a month spent in Japan conducting background cultural research and, more specifically, interviewing and talking with contemporary poets and critics about Gendai Haiku. Gendai literally means ‘new style’ and arose with the New Rising Poets movement of the late 1930s, a group that was suppressed by the government in what became known as the Haiku Persecution Incident. Gendai leans towards surrealism, and, I argue, constitutes a significant form of postmodernism which has the potential to inform and re-invigorate English-Language Haiku.  Bio  Owen Bullock’s most recent poetry collection is Pancakes for Neptune (Recent Work Press, 2023), following three previous poetry titles, five books of haiku, a bilingual edition of tanka, and a novella. His research interests include arts and health; haikai literature; poetry and process; semiotics and poetry; prose poetry, and collaboration. His scholarly work has appeared in Antipodes, Journal of Creative Arts Therapies, Axon, Journal of New Zealand Literature, Ka Mate Ka Ora, Medical Humanities, New Writing, Qualitative Inquiry, Social Alternatives, TEXT and Westerly. He is Discipline Lead for Creative Writing and Literary Studies at the University of Canberra.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to OwenBullock_Presentation.pptx