Welcome
Welcome to the Call of the Page website. We run international online courses, workshops and events with an emphasis on minimal words, and the Japanese forms haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun. If you're looking for a course we hope you enjoy exploring the tabs above.
We also offer one-to-one tutorials/mentorship with Alan Summers and publish the poetry magazine The Pan Haiku Review. Further details on each of these can be found below. And finally, we also run creative literacy and literature projects using the power of words.
If you would like to receive occasional email newsletters from us, you can subscribe at Newsletter Sign-Up.
Online courses
Late 2024 & early 2025 Course Bookings Now Open
Thank you for your support.
Courses now open for booking:
We've added a second One-Line Haiku course for this year as it sold out again last time. It starts on 22nd October 2024, with a break over Christmas.
It's suitable for students who have experience of writing haiku. For more information and booking go to: One-Line Haiku. (4 spaces left)
Our very popular newest course, The Shape of Haibun, will be running again starting 9th January 2025.
This course is suitable for students who would like experience in writing haibun/tanka prose or haiku/tanka; and also for experienced Flash Fiction writers who would like to extend their writing to encompass poetry. For more information and booking go to: The Shape of Haibun.
UPDATE: As this course sold out very early, we have opened bookings for a second group. There are now 3 spaces left.
If you would like to go on the waiting list for future dates of any of our courses, please email Alison at courses@callofthepage.org.
One-to-one Tuition with Alan Summers
Alan Summers is available for one-to-ones via Skype or Zoom or through written feedback. To pay and book sessions, go to the Special Payments page. Or to find out more, go to the One-to-one Tuition page. Thank you!
Alan has been involved in haikai literature (haiku; senryu; haibun; renku/renga; haiga and shahai), and tanka, since 1993. He is a
Pushcart Prize nominated poet for both haiku and haibun, as well as Best Small Fictions nominated for haibun. He is also a multiple Touchstone Award nominated
poet, and winner.
Alan is a former President of the United Haiku & Tanka Society (2017 to 2021), and previously General Secretary of the
British Haiku Society (1998-2000), and Editor Emeritus for the multi-award-winning Red Moon Anthologies (Red Moon Press, USA) for best haikai literature (2000-2005).
He has been a former roving Embassy of Japan ‘Japan-UK 150’ poet-in-residence, published/supported by the BBC Poetry Season website at that time celebrating 150
years of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United Kingdom (2008-2009).
Alan also found himself filmed by NHK Television (Japan) for “Europe meets Japan - Alan's Haiku Journey” and published in Japanese newspapers:
“Astonishingly moving haiku”
Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese newspaper 2002)
He is the author of various collections and pamphlets:
Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)
Moonlighting (British Haiku Society Intimations Pamphlet Series 1996)
Sundog Haiku Journal: an Australian Year (Sunfast Press 1997)
The In-Between Season (With Words Pamphlet Series 2012)
Comfort of Crows (Alan Summers & Hifsa Ashraf) Velvet Dusk Publishing (2019)
Glint pub. Proletaria politics philosophy phenomena (February 2020)
Forbidden Syllables (Bones Library May 2020)
Pan Haiku Review
PHR Issue 4
It's all about haibun (and tanka prose) this time!
You can send in your work from October 1st to October 31st
IMPORTANT
I want to read haibun and tanka prose that excites me, because it goes a bit beyond what is usually written. It should leave THE DOOR AJAR to the world, and work with tension. Tension can be included
via storytelling, topic, twists, interesting combinations of genre etc.
Please think about titles:
What title might look intriguing enough in the contents section,
or index, to tempt the reader to pay a visit to your piece first!
Please also read the notes at the end of PHR3 regarding haibun, and tanka prose, including titles.
“I think Pan Haiku Review is really energising the haiku/haibun scene” - Sheila Barksdale
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