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SV. From 2001 to 2002 you were one of the WHA directors. What was your vision of that association? What experiences have you gained from your engagement in the WHA mission? How do you view it now after many changes occurred within it?

MV. In general, I feel that haiku is about our experience of existence, the mystery and wonder of it. It is something all people have in common, regardless of their language, religion, nation, ethnicity, political views, etc. Hence I feel that haiku has a strong potential to build bridges and connect people. That is why I am very much interested in international contacts, sharing of views and exchange of poetry. The WHA embodies that ideal, as do other initiatives, for instance the World Haiku Club and the international haiku journal Hermitage, edited by Ion Codrescu. However, I also find that in the international haiku world one meets big ego's that clash with one another, tending to divide rather than to connect people. I think that haiku has a potential to overcome differences between people, but not all people seem to have that potential themselves.

SV. What is the state of haiku in your country. Is it a popular medium with a large following?

MV. The Haiku Circle Netherlands had about 200 members. In my opinion, it is not a large following among the population of sixteen million people. On the average, the members of this circle are elderly people; there are not many young people who show interest in haiku. As a literary art, haiku in the Netherlands has hardly any standing, I am sorry to say.

SV. From 1999 to 2003 you were the president of the Haiku Circle Netherlands. Can you tell us something about your visions of it and your own experiences gained during your presidency?

MV. About ten years ago I started to feel that in Dutch haiku the content and poetic value were subservient to the strict rules, as are the syllable count, an absolute ban to use figurative language, the necessity to recreate an authentic haiku moment, and so on. I thought it silly that metaphor was inadmissible to haiku, while haiku as a metaphor was considered desirable! I also felt that, for the reader, it was irrelevant whether a haiku recreated a haiku moment or just created one. One of my goals as president was to make more people realize that haiku did not follow rules, but that rules followed haiku, that haiku was not a goal but a means and that the poetic function of haiku was more important than its formal aspects. I was not the first and not the only one to take that position. By now the attitude towards haiku has become more liberal, I am glad to say.

SV. You attended several international conferences and meetings. How do you view their role in the development of haiku and/or any other purpose they may have? What are your personal feelings and experiences related to those events?

MV. Meeting other haiku poets from other countries and cultures is a reward in itself. Meeting them usually demonstrates that haiku has indeed the capacity to connect and unite people. These conferences undoubtedly enhance mutual understanding, exchange of poetry and views about haiku and friendship. Thanks to these meetings and to the internet, the world haiku society is developing. To me, reading a fine haiku by a poet I actually met or corresponded with, always makes me feel like meeting him or her again!

SV. You are also a member of the editorial team of the Red Moon Anthology (USA), editor of the Dutch/Flemish quarterly Vuursteen (Flint), and assistant editor for Modern Haiku (USA). How hard is to be engaged in so many serious tasks set by these journals of great international reputation? What is your advice to haiku poets who would like to improve their writing skills and perhaps see their work published in such journals?

MV. It's never really hard work if you do what you enjoy doing. In some periods it may be a lot of work in a short time, but that does not make it hard. Besides, most of the really hard work, like design, proof reading, production and distribution, is done by others.

My best advice to haiku poets, whether they want to publish their work or not, is to read a lot of haiku and to write a lot of haiku. You have to read a lot to learn the difference between high and low level haiku. And as haiku requires not only inspiration but also craftsmanship, one needs to improve it. One has to produce quantity to arrive at quality. And one has to write bad haiku in order to be able to write good ones.

SV. In 2005 you started your own private publishing house. Can you tell us something about it and your projects related to it?

MV. Some publishing houses in the Netherlands publish haiku, but mostly Japanese ones in Dutch translation. Recently a few publishers, who were interested in original Dutch haiku, have closed down. So I decided to give it a try myself. The books I produce are small in size and are all hand- made. The first was a collection of my own haiku and some essays, the next - a rengay series German/American poet Horst Ludwig and I did, and the third - a collection of haibun by Jac Vroemen, a Dutch haijin I admire. I plan to publish a haiku book by Jeanine Hoedemakers, a poetess who has published seven volumes of poetry elsewhere. Some of these volumes contain a few haiku, but this will be her first one of just haiku and senryu. ‘t Schrijverke (Whirlywig) is a small house, producing only one or, at most, two books a year. That way I am sure I can maintain a good level of quality.

SV. Your haiku poems have been published in a number of international journals, translated into many languages and you have published several books of haiku and rengay poetry. Are you satisfied with your accomplishments and what response do you get from general public?

MV. My attitude is such that I am always glad when some of my work is published somewhere and that it is okay if it is not. So I am never disappointed and in fact I can say that I am quite happy with acceptance and approval of my haiku.

SV. When and how were you introduced to haiku poetry?

MV. A few years before 1980 some articles about haiku published in magazines had first awoken my interest. Then I bought a book Een nieuwe maan (A New Moon) with a lengthy introduction to the history and characteristics of Japanese haiku, as well as Dutch translations of hundreds of them. This book, compiled by Mrs. J. van Tooren, induced many people in the Netherlands and Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) to read and write haiku, much like Blythe's haiku volumes had done in English speaking countries. I have been engaged in haiku ever since.

SV. What is haiku to you and why have you chosen this ancient poetry form to express your inner being?

MV. I was professionally involved in writing as a journalist and as a public relations officer, but lyricism was never my way of expression. And haiku is essentially a non-lyrical form of poetry. It's short and concise. It does not speak about things, the world, reality, but it lets them speak themselves. It shows things in a way we can emotionally relate to. Those characteristics are probably what made me choose haiku as the best means of poetic expression.

SV. Can you recall your fist haiku poem?

MV. I am not sure it was the first, but it certainly was one of the first I wrote – and the first to be published: over het water / achter takken gevangen / een bloedrode maan. In translation:

across the water
caught behind branches
a blood red moon

SV. When did you write it and under whose influence?

MV. I wrote it in 1981 and it was published in 1982 in Vuursteen, a journal of which I am now one of the editors! My main influence was the book Een nieuwe maan I have already mentioned. And hence - undoubtedly - a strong Japanese influence.

SV. What is your opinion about the world haiku movement? Why is haiku so widely written all over the world, more than any other poetry genre?

MV. I am not sure haiku is written more widely than any other form of poetry. But I do feel that there is more international exchange of poetry and views among haiku poets than among other poets. The great appeal of haiku, I feel, is based on two of its features: its shortness and its focus on the wonder and mystery of reality.

SV. How do you view the haiku world? Has it been developing or stagnating in comparison to its Japanese roots? Do you believe haiku is written more successfully today than hundreds of years ago?

MV. I believe that international haiku has been developing and will continue to do so. As I have stated elsewhere 1, in my opinion, haiku was originally adopted by Western poets from its Japanese origin and then adapted to their own languages, poetic needs and cultural context. For me, it's hard, if not impossible, to say whether haiku is nowadays written more successfully than in the past. For what is the measure of success? Popularity? Or quality? Or something else? For me, a haiku is successful when it conveys some basic intuitive rather than rational understanding of reality as it is. Even if only one reader gets that feeling out of a haiku, then it is a successful one.

SV. What do you generally think about old Japanese haiku masters? Are they possibly overpraised?

MV. There is no objective way to decide whether any haiku master, classic or modern, is overpraised or underrated. Appreciation can change over time. To make a comparison with painting: my fellow countryman Vincent van Gogh sold only one of his paintings during his whole life and look what a search for his canvasses is today! I might as well confess that there are many haiku by Japanese masters that do not mean much to me and which I would reject if they were submitted to me for publication! In part, this has to do with the lack of context: I was born exactly 300 years after Basho, in a totally different country and with an immensely different social and cultural background. However, there are many haiku written by ancient Japanese masters which still speak to me and show that haiku, whether written a few centuries ago or today, deal with what I call the essence of existence. So haiku not only connects people across the borders, but also across the ages!

SV. What do you think about contemporary haiku poets in general and what names can you select as specially successful ones?

MV. As in any art form, you will find lesser, mediocre, better and great parishioners. Again, there is no objective way to distinguish between these categories; it's highly subjective and personal matter. But there are a few that rank as top haiku writers, in my opinion. However, if I select a few names, I would later regret to have omitted some others. Also, I would think that even those writers I might rank lower have written haiku that are among the best I know, so it would feel quite unjust not to mention them. Therefore I am not going to mention any names.

SV. We come across a whole debate about what is and what is not haiku. There are many definitions of it and still pretty much disagreement regarding the haiku form, its content and poetic devices that may or may not be employed leading to a vast variety of the way of the writing of haiku and poets' expressions. Especially in America there were a lot of discussions and efforts to make a definition of haiku for the West so that even a committee was established by the HSA to come with a final definition. Haiku - can it be defined? If yes, what would be your own definition?

MV. Personally, I am certain that there is no definite definition of haiku. Maybe that is why debates continue and continue. Haiku can only be defined by haiku itself. Last year I collected personal haiku definitions by 28 haiku writers from 18 different western countries, and no two were the same! To the best of my ability I tried to analyze these definitions in an article titled The Essence of Haiku as Perceived by Western Haijin. German, French and Dutch translations of it have been published and an English version will be printed in Modern Haiku in the summer of 2007. My analysis made me think that “ the core of what western haijin perceive as the essence of haiku is a complex of interrelated intuitive ideas with regard to the composition of reality.” What I like to state here is that that survey is not about the essence of haiku, which I think is beyond definition, but about the perception of that essence.

SV. What do you think about the modernization of haiku (key words, straying from its original form and essence...)?

MV. Well, that's all part of what I labeled as the adaptation phase of haiku. It is neither bad nor good. What matters is what I call in my essay mentioned above - existential resonance evoked in the reader. If that resonance is there, modernization works well. Again: haiku does not follow rules, rules follow haiku.

SV. Although haiku poetry is the most widespread of all poetic forms written in the world today, its market is (even after a few centuries) still limited and narrow. The word of professional critics is rarely heard. It might be the case anywhere in the world... How can you account for that? Can anything change the state of haiku?

MV. One thing that possibly negatively influences the status of haiku is that too many people indiscriminatingly publish anything as haiku, although typographically their work resembles haiku in a greater or lesser measure. Even if haiku poets are amateurs, as I think most - if not all - are, there should be more professional attitude to what is and what is not presented to the world. Haiku poets are perhaps too kind to each other, approving each other's work, and thus not really helping the improvement of haiku publishing. But be it high or low, the regard for haiku makes it neither better nor worse. All we can do is to write as well as we can and to publish more selectively. If the standing of haiku grows, it's fine, if it remains low, it's okay, too. For, the importance of haiku does not depend on its status, but on its value as an art form.

***

From 1999 to 2003 - president of the Haiku Circle Netherlands.

From 2001 to 2002 - European director of the World Haiku Association.

Since 2002 - member of the editorial of the Red Moon Anthology (USA).

Since 2003 - editor of the Dutch/Flemish quarterly Vuursteen (Flint), the oldest haiku journal in Europe.

Since the beginning of 2007 - assistant editor of Modern Haiku (USA).

He attended international haiku meetings in Great Britain (1999), Slovenia (1999), the Netherlands (2003) and Germany (2005).

Translations of his haiku poems have been, as far as he remembers, published in journals, anthologies and on internet sites in Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, France, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, the USA.

Individual volumes: Zijn met wat is (To Be with What Is), 1993; een beetje adem, 1998 (English version: some breath, 1999); geen woord teveel/not a word too much, 2000; om kort te gaan (to be short) 2005.

With Betty Kaplan: smoke signals - nine rengay, 2003. With Horst Ludwig: twelve moons/zwolf Monde/twelve moons - a bilingual rengay series (with English translation), 2004.

He started his own small private publishing house 't schrijverke' (whirlywig) in 2005.

1 Introduction to Gwiazda za Gwiazda, a Polish anthology of European haiku, compiled and edited by Ewa Thomaszewska; Krakow 2005.