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Southeastern Europe

The first publication in Yugoslavia treating haiku was Miloš Crnjanski 's Poezija starog Japana (Poetry of Ancient Japan), published in 1925. He was attracted to the aesthetics of aioi-no-matsu - the eternal - and Buddhist empathy, in common with his poetic theme of connecting distant things and concepts through affection.

In socialist Yugoslavia, development of haiku poetry began during the 1960s, when the first haiku books were written, starting with Leptirova krila (The Butterfly's Wings) by Dubravko Ivančan in 1964. Other writers include Vladimir Zorčić (1941-1995), Milan Tokin 's (1909-1962) unpublished collection Godišnja doba (Seasons), Desanka Maksimović, Alexander Neugebauer (1930-1989), and Zvonko Petrović (1925-2009). Vladimir Devide (1925-2010) published the first book on haiku theory in 1970, titled Japanese Poetry and its Cultural and Historical Context, with many translations of Japanese classics. Dejan Razić (1935-1985) published two books on haiku in 1979, The Development of Haikai Poetry from its Beginning to Basho, and The Peak of Haikai Poetry. The journal Haiku ran from 1977 to 1981.

The Haiku Marathon (1982) and the Yugoslav Haiku Competition (1985) were organised in the 1980s by Slavko Sedlar. The first Serbian haiku journal Paun started being published in 1988 with Milijan Despotović as an editor. The journal Kulture istoka (1983-1992) gave further impetus to the study of Japanese and other oriental cultures. In 1991, the Belgrade-based haiku club Šiki was formed, named after Masaoka Shiki. In 1999, Anakiev together with Serge Tome created the web site Haiku Association of Southeastern Europe. The Haiku Association of Yugoslavia was formed in 2000. The multilingual "Knots- The Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry" was published in 1999 with poems from writers all over southeastern Europe. The 2000 conference of the World Haiku Federation was held in Slovenia.