 Newer poets exemplify divergent tendencies, from self-effacing nature-oriented haiku (Allan Burns) to Zen themes perpetuating the concepts of Blyth and Hackett (Stanford M. Forrester), poignant haiku-senryū hybrids in the manner of Rotella and Swede (Roberta Beary), the use of subjective, surreal, and mythic elements (Fay Aoyagi), emergent social and political consciousness (John J. Dunphy), and genre-bending structural and linguistic experimentation as well as "found haiku" (Scott Metz).The first Haiku North America conference was held at Las Positas College in Livermore, California in 1991, and has been held every other year since then, directed by Garry Gay, Deborah P Kolodji, Paul Miller, and Michael Dylan Welch.Conferences have been Livermore, California (1991, 1993), Toronto (1995), Portland, Oregon (1997), Evanston, Illinois (1999), Boston (2001), New York City (2003), Port Townsend, Washington (2005), Winston-Salem, North Carolina (2007), Ottawa (2009), Seattle (2011), Long Beach, California (2013), Schenectady, New York (2015), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (2017), Winston-Salem again (2019), and Victoria, British Columbia (2021).