William J. Higginson

William J. Higginson won the first Haiku Award given by the Haiku Society of America, which he shared with Nicholas A. Virgilio, in 1968. As President of the Haiku Society of America in 1976, he won an award from the Society for “general criticism and comment on modern, experimental haiku, and for his collection of essays, Itadakimasu, Essays on Haiku and Senryu in English” (1971). The Haiku Handbook, edited by Higginson and Penny Harter, “made accessible for the first time in English a concise, eminently readable compendium of haiku history, modern developments, and information on both writing and teaching haiku and the related forms” (A Haiku Path, 157).

Below, Higginson writes to Virgilio rejecting his haiku submission, criticizing him for sentimentality, among other things.