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.
Haiku Summer School 2025
Our first Zoom-based online Haiku Summer School in July/August 2024 was such a great success,
we are pleased to be running another in 2025!
The dates:
Haiku Summer School will run over four days from Monday August 11th to Thursday August 14th.
For more information and booking please go to: Summer School 2025
* There are currently 5 places left at Haiku Summer School *
Online courses
2025 Upcoming Courses
Thank you for your support.
One-Line Haiku (Shorter Course)
This is a new version of our very popular One-Line Haiku course, with 4 instead of 5 assignments. It will start on 18th September 2025. This course is suitable for students who have experience of writing haiku. If you are relatively new to haiku, we recommend taking one of our regular haiku courses first, to get the full benefit from this one. In the meantime, our advice is to keep reading haiku! For more information and booking please go to: One-Line Haiku (Shorter Course)
Introducing...Haiku
One of our most long-standing courses will be starting again on 23rd September 2025. This course is designed to be gentle enough for complete beginners (at haiku, or at creative writing), but at the same time stimulating enough to introduce haiku as a new form to those who are already writing poetry or prose, or as a warm-up/refresher for more experienced writers of haiku. For more information and booking please go to: Introducing...Haiku.
The Shape of Haibun
This course has proved
very popular since its launch in 2024. We have therefore organised a second start date for 2025, which is 1st May 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 please go
to: The Shape of Haibun. (only 1 space left) FULLY BOOKED
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 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:
“There are no useless words or phrases. A perfect haiku.”
Isamu Hashimoto (Japan, 2014)
Selector for The Mainichi's popular Haiku in English column
“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)
The Pan Haiku Review
The Pan Haiku Review issue four
haibun & tanka-bun edition
Winter 2024
PHR4 editor: Alan Summers
Now available to download via the PHR page: The Pan Haiku
Review
“Reading the new Pan Review slowly, savoring...It's wild, exotic, and exhilarating. It takes me places I never even considered. Each haibun place I stop, surprises me, and makes me pay attention. It can't get any better than that.” - Jo
“I think Pan Haiku Review is really energising the haiku/haibun scene” - Sheila Barksdale
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