FESTIVAL LOUNGE

A place for haiku, warm words, and poets from around the world

The Festival Lounge brings together Guest Haiku and warm messages, with international haiku poets in the upper gallery and Korean haiku and invited poets in the lower gallery, for the 2026 Youth Festival. Adults outside the competition age range may join here without entering the judged competition.

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INTERNATIONAL HAIKU POETS

International Haiku Poets

Only overseas poets whose literary field is haiku are introduced in this upper gallery.

Meet More International Haiku Poets
Yuzo Ono

Yuzo Ono

小野裕三
Japan

Yuzo Ono is a haiku poet and writer born in Oita, Japan. He was educated at the University of Tokyo (BA). He stayed in the UK from 2018 to 2020 and studied at the Royal College of Art (MRes, fine arts pathway). Currently he is based in Kawasaki, Japan. He won the Modern Haiku Association Award for Criticism in 2002 and the Modern Haiku Association New Talent Award (honorable mention) in 2005. He is the author of several haiku poem books: “Mexican Restaurant” (Kadokawa Publishing, 2006) , “Further Selection of New Haiku 21” (co-author, Yushorin Press, 2010) and “12 Untitled / 12 Haiku”（co-author, Mixam UK, 2026）. In the anthology “Haiku Poets Born in the Post-war Era” (Mainichi Newspaper Publishing, 2012), he was selected as one of 109 leading contemporary haiku poets of Japan. Also, he is a councillor of the Haiku International Association and a member of the British Haiku Society. From 2023 to 2026, he served as the judge for the monthly English haiku programme on the website of English-Speaking Union of Japan. Having studied at the British art school, he has a keen interest in the relationship between haiku poetry and fine art, and between Western and Eastern cultures.

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Hana Fujimoto

Hana Fujimoto

藤本はな
Japan

Since 2015, Hana Fujimoto has served as Deputy Secretary General of the Haiku International Association. Since 2017, she has served as Secretary General of the Haiku UNESCO Promotion Council, continuing her efforts to promote haiku internationally and to enhance recognition of its value as cultural heritage. For fourteen years, she assisted Professor Akito Arima (有馬朗人), former President of the Haiku International Association, and participated in a wide range of activities related to the international exchange and promotion of Japanese haiku. She belongs to the haiku group Tamamo (玉藻), founded in 1930 by Tatsuko Hoshino (星野立子), daughter of Takahama Kyoshi (高浜虚子), and is also a member of the Japan Traditional Haiku Association. Her haiku have appeared in various haiku anthologies and journals, and she has also been involved in haiku-related publishing and editorial activities. In addition, she has taken part in numerous international cultural exchange initiatives as an editor and organizer of international haiku exchange events. Since 2011, she has continuously engaged in international haiku exchange activities, particularly across the United States, Europe, and Asia, while also maintaining an active involvement in haiku exchange with Korea. She has delivered lectures in various countries and regions, including the United States, Daegu in Korea, and Vietnam, on haiku, Japanese culture, and international haiku exchange. She has received a number of honors and awards related to haiku, including an award at the Tokyo Daijingu Haiku Contest. She has lived in the United States and subsequently worked for The New York Times Tokyo Bureau for ten years. She majored in English at Sacred Heart Junior College. Hana Fujimoto is a haiku poet who has devoted many years to both the creation of traditional Japanese haiku and international literary exchange. Since 2011 in particular, she has continued to participate in international haiku exchanges connecting Japan with the United States, Europe, Asia, and Korea. Through not only her own haiku writing but also editing, lecturing, and organizing international events, she has contributed in diverse ways to the international development and wider appreciation of haiku.

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David McMurray

David McMurray

Canada

David McMurray, a columnist for The Asahi Shimbun’s Asahi Haikuist Network, teaches haiku at the International University of Kagoshima and supervises graduate students researching haiku monuments on Sakurajima volcano and walking routes that connect them.

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Dilyana Georgieva

Dilyana Georgieva

Bulgaria

Dilyana Georgieva is a Bulgarian opera singer (soprano), haiku poet, a member of the Bulgarian Haiku Union since 2012 and a chairwoman of the Bulgarian Haiku Union since 2020. Dilyana published the trilingual book Long Flight (2023), featuring 140 haiku. She is the author and co-author of trilingual haiku collections Matchstick Boats (2014) in Bulgarian, English, and Russian and the the collection Whimsies (2018). Her haiku works and rengei poetry have appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies, such as The Sea and Radiant Wind, a Bulgarian-English project; A Different Silence – a Hungarian-Bulgarian anthology of Bulgarian haiku, published in Hungary; Beyond Words – a Bulgarian-English project by the Bulgarian Haiku Union; Climates – a Bulgarian-French-Italian anthology;
publications via the Plovdiv Haiku Club and the British Haiku Society.
 Dilyana participated in several exhibitions among which she had solo photo-haiga exhibitions - a combination of photography and haiku and participations in collaborative projects such as Traveler's Menu. Dilyana has a separate classical music career as an opera singer. She is a performing and recording soprano. She has released three albums, two in classical music - Après un rêve and Love Themes, as one with Bulgarian folk music accompanied by a bagpipe, titled Magic Revelations.

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Iliyana Stoyanova

Iliyana Stoyanova

United Kingdom

Iliyana Stoyanova is a poet, editor and translator; she holds a PhD in Theology. Iliyana served as Secretary of the United Haiku and Tanka Society (2017–2020) and has been Living Legacies Editor for the Living Haiku Anthology since 2014 and Haikupedia Editor since 2020. She was also British Haiku Society Communications Officer (2016–2022), Awards Administrator (2016–2024), Editor of its journal, Blithe Spirit (from 2022), and BHS President since 2023. Iliyana started writing haiku twenty years ago. Her haiku and other poems have been published in numerous journals (cattails, cho, Blithe Spirit, hedgerow, Presence, Ribbons, Skylark, Time Haiku, etc.) and anthologies (Naad Anunaad, 2016; Wishbone Moon, 2018; Haiku 2021; The Haiku Way To Healing, 2022; One Thread, 2024, etc.), and won several international awards. Iliyana enjoys photography, watercolour painting, travelling, and reading. She resides in Aveiro, Portugal.

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Jim Kacian

Jim Kacian

United States of America · 버지니아주・Virginia

Jim Kacian has been involved in the haiku world for more than 4 decades as a poet, publisher, editor, translator, presenter, promoter, organizer, educator, and public spokesman. He lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with his partner of 40 years, the poet and psychotherapist Maureen Gorman.

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KOREA HAIKU POETS · GUEST POETS

Where Korea Haiku Meets Poetry from Around the World

This gallery is an open space where Korea Haiku poets and invited poets of sijo, free verse, and other poetic traditions from Korea and abroad share their works and the languages of their lives.

The meeting of poets from different genres and cultural backgrounds broadens the literary horizons of Korea Haiku and introduces young readers to the diversity of world poetry and the value of solidarity.

Beyond genres and borders, a world connected through poetry.

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OH INWOO
Domestic · Haiku

OH INWOO

Republic of Korea · Seoul

Oh In-woo (Ki-seok) is a writer who records everyday sensations and bodily memories, mainly through haiku and haiku prose. Beginning on the theatre stage, and later passing through the worlds of Indian dance and carpentry, he has translated the breath and rhythm of labor learned through the body into poetic language. His haiku reveals the depth and warmth of life through small, concrete moments: the sound of water, the smell of rice, a cough, a breath. He continues to understand the world through sensation and to draw meaning from silence, exploring the subtle tremors of daily life and the texture of existence. Today, he moves between haiku and prose, recording the time he has lived and steadily reflecting on the place where body and language meet.

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William Gomez Pretel
International · Free Verse

William Gomez Pretel

Spain・Korea · Busan

William is an oceanographer and professor at Korea Maritime and Ocean University, with a lifelong passion for the ocean, both past and present. His connection with the sea has been shaped not only by academic research, but also by sailing and by a deep curiosity about the cultural and historical relationships between people and the sea. Beyond his academic work, William enjoys writing poetry as a personal form of expression and reflection. He is particularly inspired by the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca, as well as by other modern writers. He is also deeply attracted to the literary genre of magical realism, but also enjoys surrealist and experimental poetry, particularly poetry that embraces unexpected images, associations, ambiguity, and the playful disruption of conventional meaning. William enjoys nostalgic poetry mixed with maritime nuances, where the sea is represented almost as a living being, an ancient presence that has existed alongside human societies for generations. For him, poetry offers another way of observing the ocean: not only as a physical and scientific environment, but also as a space of memory, imagination, emotion, and human experience.

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Miye Kim
Domestic · Haiku

Miye Kim

South Korea · 경기도 의정부

Kim Miye retired in 2020 as a professor in the Department of English at Dongduk Women’s University after completing her term as Dean of the Graduate School. She is currently Professor Emerita of English at Dongduk Women’s University and has served as President of the Shakespeare Association of Korea. Kim Miye has also maintained a deep interest in theatrical directing and has personally directed more than ten Shakespearean plays. She has enjoyed reading and writing haiku since childhood and currently serves as editor and chair of the judging committee for the haiku section of the literary journal Hwangya Munhak (The Wild). Kim Miye also co-edits and publishes the online haiku magazine Brief Candle with Dr. John J. Han. Dr. Han is currently Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Theology at Missouri Baptist University, where he also serves as Professor of English and Creative Writing. Kim Miye’s haiku writing is closely connected to her academic specialization in Shakespearean drama. She has drawn important inspiration for her haiku from Shakespeare’s way of observing human life and presenting its moments as they are, rather than explaining or defining human behavior and emotion. Kim Miye believes that if haiku is poetry that captures a fleeting moment in nature, human beings themselves are also part of nature, and that capturing a moment of human action exactly as it unfolds can likewise approach the essence of haiku. Guided by this idea, she has developed a deep attachment to haiku and has continued to write steadily. Shakespearean drama unfolds as a vast world of language composed of countless words and lines, whereas haiku belongs to a world of extremely restrained and concise expression. Yet Kim Miye believes that these two seemingly contrasting literary forms can meet at their deepest roots. In Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we encounter the paradoxical phrase “hot ice”, followed by the question “How shall we find the concord of this discord?”—in other words, “How can we find harmony within this discord?” For Kim Miye, the process of discovering a momentary harmony within things that appear contradictory and capturing it in a few words may be understood as both the practice of haiku and a form of literary play.

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Kim Sangja
Domestic · Haiku

Kim Sangja

Republic of Korea/Busan · 부산

Born in Busan in 1952, she graduated from Busan National University of Education. She spent seven years as an elementary school teacher and later worked for fourteen years in youth counseling at an educational research institute affiliated with the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education. She also operated Mukseojae (墨書齋), a private museum, for fifteen years, where she closely observed the traces of human life, memory, and everyday culture left by the passage of time. Her many years of experience in classrooms, counseling rooms, and the museum naturally became the foundation of her literary sensibility. Encountering Korea Haiku, a poetic form that captures small moments of everyday life and subtle seasonal changes in concise language, opened a new path of creative writing for her. In January 2025, she officially made her literary debut as a Korea Haiku poet. Beginning with the inaugural issue of SUMNORGEE in December 2024, she continued to publish her work through the third volume of SUMNORGEE in 2026. In 2025, she served as Chair of the Standing Executive Committee of the Korea Haiku Federation, contributing to the creation and wider appreciation of Korea Haiku. In March 2026, she published her first individual collection of Korea Haiku, Balsam Flower Dye (『봉숭아 꽃물』). Her Korea Haiku grows out of the distinctly Korean landscapes through which she has lived—the sea breeze of Busan, the light falling through neighborhood alleys, the voices of people, and memories of everyday life accumulated over many years. With an affectionate yet attentive gaze toward nature and ordinary things, she seeks to transform fleeting moments of daily life into enduring lines through the clear and resilient qualities of the Korean language. She continues to write Korea Haiku, recording the small moments of resonance she discovers in Korea’s four seasons and everyday life.

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Kim Suseong
Domestic · Haiku

Kim Suseong

Repulic of Korea · 울산・Ulsan

.He is a researcher and Korea Haiku poet who has explored the creation, theory, education, and digital dissemination of Korea Haiku. He has continued his research on food culture and everyday life culture in early modern and modern Japan, while maintaining a deep interest in how literature can expand anew through the senses of daily life, regional culture, and digital technology. He believes that Korea Haiku should not remain a mere transfer of the form of Japanese haiku, but should develop its own aesthetics through the rhythm and sensibility of the Korean language, the perception of seasons, and scenes from everyday life. To this end, he has steadily worked to organize the creative language, critical terminology, educational methods, archival foundations, and international exchange networks of Korea Haiku. He is also exploring the possibility of establishing Korean haiku-related terms such as Ulteomal, a Korean interpretation of utamakura. As a humanistic engineer who values the intersection of the humanities and technology, he is also committed to building digital humanities platforms that connect literary creation, publishing, archives, and electronic book production systems. Through the development of the Korea Haiku Federation website and related systems, he is helping to create a literary ecosystem where haiku poets, readers, and researchers can interact and grow together. His work connects Japanese literary studies, food culture studies, Korea Haiku creation, and digital publishing system development into a single intellectual trajectory. His primary concern is to expand the new possibilities of Korea Haiku between tradition and modernity, analog sensibility and digital technology, regional culture and world literature.

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Park Jeong-geun
Domestic · Haiku

Park Jeong-geun

Republic of Korea

Ph.D. in Literature / Former Professor of English Literature at Daejin University / Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Hwangya Literature / Novelist, Playwright, Poet, and Literary Critic / Director of Madel Theater Company / Director of Sola Literary Arts Center / Former President of the Shakespeare Society

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AN SOO HYUN
Domestic · Haiku

AN SOO HYUN

Republic of Korea · 부산

An Soo Hyun, PhD, is a literary critic, literary translator, Korea Haiku poet, and sijo poet. He currently serves as a Visiting Professor at the Institute of International Maritime Affairs, Korea Maritime & Ocean University, and as Secretary-General of the Korea Haiku Federation. His principal fields of research include classical Japanese literature, haiku, Korea Haiku literature, and comparative literature. His work explores the aesthetic characteristics of the traditional poetry of Korea and Japan, as well as the forms of literary and cultural interaction between the two traditions. In particular, he approaches haiku not simply as an imported poetic form, but as a genre capable of being reinterpreted and creatively developed within the traditions of Korean poetry and the sensibilities of modern Korean literature. Alongside his academic research, he has pursued literary criticism, translation, haiku, and sijo, bringing scholarship and creative practice into sustained dialogue. Drawing upon the distinctive qualities of the Korean language, together with Korean perceptions of nature, seasonality, and emotion, he seeks to articulate a distinctive aesthetic for Korea Haiku while situating it within the broader currents of international haiku literature. Through the Korea Haiku Federation, he has actively fostered exchanges with haiku poets and scholars in Korea and abroad, contributing to the writing, study, teaching, and international development of Korea Haiku. His comparative research on traditional Korean verse and Japanese waka and haiku further examines how Korea Haiku, written in the Korean language, may develop as a distinctive poetic form expressive of Korea’s language, culture, and aesthetic consciousness. He is also committed to haiku education and international cultural exchange among younger generations, encouraging young people to encounter nature, humanity, language, and culture through poetry. Through his role in planning and organizing the Korea Haiku World Youth Festival, he continues to broaden the international horizons of Korea Haiku and to foster literary exchange among young people across cultures.

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Lee Nayeul
Domestic · Free Verse

Lee Nayeul

Republic of Korea · 부산・Busan

Lee Na-yeol (李娜烈) graduated from the Department of Science Education (Chemistry major) at the College of Education, Pusan National University, and served as a secondary school teacher. She is currently a member of the Korean Writers’ Association, Busan Writers’ Association, and Busan Poets’ Association. She has also served as Vice President of the Busan Literary Association, Director of the Suyeong Writers’ Association, Executive Director and Editorial Director of the Buul Newspaper Literary Forum, and President of the Gaya Women’s Literary Association. Her poetry collections include The Rustle of Leaves, A Tree Is a Flame, The Moon Rising from a Well, and There Is a Fresh Speed, along with other published works. She has received the Suyeong Munye Literary Award twice (2019 and 2024), the Main Prize of the Munshim Literary Award (2022), the President’s Award of the Busan Writers’ Association (2024), the Grand Prize of the Busan Literary Humanities Award (2025), and the Grand Prize of the Buul Newspaper Literary Forum (2025).

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LEE YOUNGWOONG
Domestic · Haiku

LEE YOUNGWOONG

Republic of Korea · 부산・Busan

A writer who captures everyday moments and the sensibility of nature through haiku, grounded in the life experience of the post-war generation. Through short poems, he seeks to convey the flow of the mind and the meaning of time, aspiring to create relatable Korean haiku through the subtle nuances of the Korean language.

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LIM SEONNYEO
Domestic · Haiku

LIM SEONNYEO

Republic of Korea · 서울・Seoul

Born in Yesan, Chungcheongnam-do, in 1962, Lim Seonnyeo has long been attentive to the subtle moments of everyday life and the changing seasons, developing a deep interest in short poetry that leaves a lingering resonance beyond explanation. Rather than describing fleeting emotions in grand or excessive language, she came to Korea Haiku through the process of leaving only the words that truly matter. In January 2025, she made her literary debut as a Korea Haiku poet. In February 2025, her works were published in Vol. 2 of SUMNORGEE, and she received the Korea Haiku Grand Prize at the 2nd Publication Commemorative Event. In March 2026, her works were also featured in Vol. 3 of SUMNORGEE, and she continues to pursue Korea Haiku writing with dedication. She currently serves as a Standing Executive Committee Member of the Korea Haiku Federation, contributing to the creation and wider appreciation of Korea Haiku. For Lim Seonnyeo, haiku is not simply a literature of linguistic “compression,” but rather a literature of selection—a question of what, among countless words, should ultimately remain. She regards the season word (Gyejeolmal) as a “coordinate of time,” indicating where a particular moment belongs within the passage of time and the seasons. While respecting the traditional aesthetics of Japanese haiku, she seeks not to imitate them directly, but to create new poetic space through the distinctive rhythm, breath, and sense of closure inherent in the Korean language. In the principle of fueki ryūkō (不易流行), she finds a harmony between enduring essence and continual renewal. Rather than imposing excessive meaning upon objects or experiences, she seeks to reveal them with clarity and transparency. For her, poetic newness is found not necessarily in distant or extraordinary landscapes, but in walking the same road in another season and seeing familiar things with a changed heart. With the conviction that “I do not want merely to write briefly; I want what I write to remain for a long time,” she continues to create Korea Haiku that offers no single answer, but instead leaves readers a space in which to reopen their own lives and senses.

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Chung HyunSuk
Domestic · Haiku

Chung HyunSuk

Repulic of Korea · 부산・Busan

Born in Daegu in 1959. Graduated from the Department of English Education at Kyungpook National University; M.A. in Education from the Graduate School of Education, Kyungpook National University; Ph.D. in English Literature from Kyungpook National University. Served as a dispatched teacher at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Worked as an English teacher in middle and high schools for 27 years, and as a career and college counseling teacher for 13 years. Former President of the Busan Career and College Counseling Teachers Association. Served as an admissions committee member for foreign language high schools for 12 years. Debuted as a Korea Haiku writer in March 2026.

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Angela Posada-Swafford
International · Free Verse

Angela Posada-Swafford

United States · Miami Beach

I am a bilingual science journalist, author, explorer, and lecturer based both in Florida and Colombia. For the past 30 years I have passionately been communicating the complexities of science to all audiences, from general public to researchers, students and children, with a creatve and literary angle, as well as a journalistic one. I won Colombia's top jurnalism award in 2017, Premio Simon Bolivar. My words apear in NatGeo magazine and many others. I am an explorer at heart, participted in several Antarctic, paleontological and oceanographic expeditions. First Colombian person to step on the South Pole with the US Ant. Program. First Hispanic journalist to be selected to the Knight Fellowships in Science Journalism at MIT. I give talks at Colombian embassies, as well as science writing workshops at several international universities. Fellow, The Explorers Club. Wrote 8 science and adventure series for kids read in Latin America's schools.

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Linda Drattell
International · Other Poetry

Linda Drattell

United States/Spain · Colorado/Barcelona

Linda Drattell has two poetry chapbooks, Remember This Day (Bronze Award, Reader Views) and The Lighter Side of Horse Manure. Her poetry has won awards from Writer's Digest (second place), Atlanta Review Poetry International Grand Prize (finalist), and C&R Press Poetry Prize (long-listed), and is published in literary magazines and anthologies. Her writing has been reviewed on blogs, podcasts and news media. Her co-authored children’s book, Who Wants to be Friends With a Dragon?, won a Distinguished Favorite Award from Independent Press Awards. Linda’s debut novel, The Peccadilloes of Filamena Phipps, will be released by Stairwell Books later this year. She will also participate as a panelist at the UntitledTown Author and Book Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Deafened in her thirties, she relearned to navigate social, professional, and family relationships, which she chronicled in nonfiction articles. Several of her deaf-related poems were published in the anthology Deaf Poetry Now!! and she presented at the 2024 International Stichting Plotz & Laat Doven Congres in the Netherlands about taking control of one’s hearing loss journey through writing. Linda holds an MBA from the American University and serves as board secretary of the California Communications Access/Ability Central Foundation. She is a past national president of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults.

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LOUNGE NOTES

A Shared Festival Record

Guest Haiku and notes from the heart approved for public display.

A Note from the Heart KO EN JA 오인우 한국
I sincerely hope that Korea Haiku World Youth Festival 2026 will be a significant international haiku festival where domestic and international haiku artists meet and interact with each other, and that it will be successfully held along with the endless development of the Korea Haiku Federation. I would like to thank everyone preparing for this event for their hard work, and I hope it will be a wonderful international haiku festival.
Guest Haiku 정현숙 한국 양산 · Summer

마로니에 길

marronnier lane—green lightdapples the parasol
A Note from the Heart KO EN JA 알레한드로 스페인
I'm looking forward to the development of Korean Haiku.
A Note from the Heart KO EN JA 김수성 대한민국
I hope that one line of poetry will connect different languages and hearts, and bring warm courage and long-lasting joy to everyone who participated in this festival.

Join us with a Guest Haiku or a few warm words

Guest Haiku and Lounge messages are not competition entries and are not included in competition judging or awards.

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