Board & Staff – Nick VIrgilio Haiku

Meet the Dedicated Leaders Preserving Nick Virgilio's Haiku Legacy.

A home for haiku, writing and community in the heart of South Waterfront Camden.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to foster the creative and spiritual practice of haiku and poetry for everyone, especially youth, to enhance literacy, deepen appreciation of nature and human experience, and build connected communities. We also aim to advance the legacy of Nick Virgilio, Camden’s esteemed poet, through collaborations with academic, civic, and cultural institutions.

View a 20-minute documentary about Virgilio and his impact on American Haiku….

Nick Virgilio reading his poetry.

History and Purpose of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association

Founded in 1989, the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association (NVHA) aims to inspire and support the writing of haiku poetry, especially among young people, and to honor the legacy of Camden’s own Nick Virgilio. Over the past decades, the NVHA has:

Created the Nick Virgilio Writers House in Waterfront South, Camden, housing the literacy and food and diaper distribution programs of Mighty Writers Camden.
Partnered with Rutgers University on the Nick Virgilio Poetry Project and created the NVHA Virgilio Archive Project.
Established and managed an annual haiku scholarship competition for middle and high school students in partnership with the Haiku Society of America.
Organized numerous free educational workshops on haiku writing and begun teaching elementary, middle school and high school students haiku and other short form poetry in public, private and parochial schools.
Operated extensive free programming for the community including open mics, Ginko walks, the Midnight Notes readings with local poets, and virtual workshops.
Built and maintained a social media following of nearly 4,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, as well as a base of lifetime members and annual supporters.
Held an annual poetry reading and celebration to commemorate Nick Virgilio’s birthday and promoted haiku writing and mindful nature walks to inspire poetry.

Do You Haiku: A Children’s Haiku Workshop

See a haiku writing session and poetry workshops designed for children. We offer workshops customized for elementary, middle school and high school. These engaging teaching events inspire creativity and enhance literacy through the art of short-form poetry.

Board of Directors

Robin Palley

President

Robin Palley is a haiku poet and served as Senior Vice President, Healthcare Consulting, at Epsilon, a Publicis Groupe company.

Warren C. Longmire

Vice-President

Warren is a poet, technologist, and educator from North Philadelphia. His second poetry collection, Bird/Diz [an erased history of bebop] was published by Bunny Presse in 2022. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Dr. Geoffrey M. Sill

Treasurer

Geoffrey Sill is an Emeritus Professor of English at the Camden Campus of Rutgers University, where he taught for (40) years British and American literature for forty years.

Vanessa Woods

Fundraising Committee Chair

MS, LPC

Vanessa Woods is a fierce advocate, compassionate healer, and innovative leader in the mental health landscape.

Reet Starwind

Community Outreach Committee Chair

“Interstellar Storyteller” Reet Starwind is a Camden region organizer, educator, and creative director.

Henry Brann

Building Committee Chair

Henry Brann has been a member of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association since its inception. He’s published two chapbooks of his poems.

Kevin Shelly

Kevin C. Shelly is a writer and retired journalist. He wrote the book Lynne Bogue Hunt: A Sporting Life, reviewed by Field & Stream as a “must-have.”

Bonnie Squires

Co-Vice President

Bonnie Squires is president of Squires Consulting, a woman-owned communications company.

Faryn Kushner

Faryn Kushner’s life and creative pursuits have been interwoven from the beginning. From her time in art school, to supporting others as a patron of the arts, she’s had a long-time appreciation for artistic expression.

Alfred J. Dansbury, Sr.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Journalism from Rutgers University, a Master’s of Arts degree in Business Administration from Eastern University, and a Master’s of Arts in Writing from Rowan University.

Tazuo Bashō Yamaguchi

Adam Henze

Dr. Adam Henze is a researcher, educator, and spoken word artist, and has shared his work in over 30 states. Adam is the Director of Literacy Programming at Flanner House and is the Director of Power of a Sentence, a creative writing program in Indiana prisons. He received his PhD in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University. Adam and his wife own Indy Type Shop, a hybrid typewriter repair shop, antiquarian bookstore, and event space.

Staff

Camille Wilson

Camille handles programming, social media and communications for NVHA. As a freelance writer, she enjoys writing on current trends for beauty and lifestyle brand NaturallyCurly, and writing features on prominent young scholars for ASSIST, a non-profit student exchange organization.

Nasar Rider

Born and raised in the city of Camden, Nasar Rider is a Web Design specialist responsible for managing The Nick Virgilio Website as well as keeping many of The Writers House programs flowing. A young talent with an extreme love for community art, whether through his young endeavors as a mural artist in Philadelphia.

Juwan Clayton

Juwan was born and raised in the city of Camden. He studied Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. A master of aesthetics, he loves to study music and film from the early 1900s. You can always find him spinning vinyl on his 1915 Victrola. Thee Sinseers, Sade, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway.

Sean Lynch

Sean Lynch is a writer and editor who lives in Philadelphia. His fifth poetry collection, Halo Nest: Poems on Grief is now available from Alien Buddha Press.

Sean Lynch is a writer and editor who lives in Philadelphia. His fifth poetry collection, Halo Nest: Poems on Grief is now available from Alien Buddha Press. Previous books are, the city of your mind (Whirlwind Press, 2013), Broad Street Line (Moonstone Press, 2016), 100 Haiku (Moonstone Press, 2017), and On Violence (Radical Paper Press, 2019).

Nycir Keen

Nycir Keen is a Philadelphia-based poet with roots in competitive slam poetry.

Nycir Keen is a Philadelphia-based poet with roots in competitive slam poetry. An active performer and spoken word artist, Nycir Keen has been a member of the Collective Mic since 2017 and is a frequent poet for the Gullah Traveling Theater in Beaufort, SC as well as being a student performer for the Land and Body program hosted by Power Street Theater.

Emeritus - Board and Advisors

(And ever in our hearts, and in loving memory – Nick’s brother Tony Virgilio and Father Michael Doyle who together inspired the creation of The Writers House)

Fr. Michael Doyle

Monsignor Michael J. Doyle, former pastor of Sacred Heart Church, needs little introduction. Irish born, Fr. Doyle briefly taught in Absecon but ministered almost exclusively to the city of Camden. Friends, supporters and associates include late peace activist the Rev.

Nick Virgilio’s legacy

Part of the mission of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association is the preservation of Nick Virgilio’s legacy. When Nick died in 1989, the NVHA was created to memorialize him as one of the first, and one of the best, writers of American haiku poetry and to give readers new ways to access the full range of Nick’s poems, in both published and unpublished formats.

In 2020, the NVHA published an article on Nick Virgilio’s legacy in the database of The Haiku Foundation, Haikupedia.org. The article discusses Nick’s early days, his life in haiku, and the vast trove of unpublished poems he left at his death. This archive, approximately 8,750 typed pages, each page containing from one to 10 poems, is housed in the Special Collections department of Robeson Library at Rutgers University-Camden.

Through a collaboration between NVHA and Robeson Library, the archive has been digitized and made available, free of charge, to the public. Using this digital collection, writers, teachers, and students who search the database will be able to compare Nick’s published poems with over 20,000 early drafts and fragments of poems to see how Nick wrote his haiku and polished them over time. (Click on “Nick Virgilio Haiku Archive: Home” to start your search).

Another way the NVHA is working to preserve and extend Nick’s legacy is by collecting and editing all of his published haiku and letters with other poets of the day. Nick published some 800 haiku in his lifetime, most of them in limited-circulation magazines like American Haiku, Modern Haiku, and Frogpond. Many of these magazines are now out of print, available only in special collections of libraries. With the assistance of The Haiku Foundation, the NVHA has published a collection of all of Nick’s published works, along with the place and date of their first publication. Collected Haiku is available in our bookstore.