It is June 21st, 2020, and The Haiku Foundation just announced the debut of Haikupedia, its encyclopedia of all things haiku! I copy below the Troutswirl blog post about the first week of Haikupedia’s existence:

Each week for the next several months we will release a few new articles in our ever-expanding encyclopedia of haiku. These we hope will give you a sense of the potential scale of this enterprise, as well as entice you to become a part of the project.

We begin this week with a long biographical article on Japanese master poet Kobayashi Issa. We present the full English text of the Matsuyama Declaration, a landmark in the establishment of “world haiku.” Our featured country this release is New Zealand, not least because of their supremely executed management of the Covid-19 pandemic. You will also find short biographies of this week’s featured writers, David G Lanoue and Sandra Simpson, as well as the several people behind the start-up of Haikupedia: Editor in Chief Charles Trumbull, Managing Editor Stella Pierides, Photo Editor Iliyana Stoyanova, Haikupedia (and Haiku Foundation) Website Manager Dave Russo, and THF Founder and President Jim Kacian.

Haikupedia is a vast and wonderful project and I am both humbled and honored to be part of it.