Allyson Whipple

Category: Saint Louis

  • The Best of It: Start of the Year Edition

    1. Closing 2025 with the Stew Year’s Eve dinner and a party hosted by two of my favorite people.

    2. 12th Night in Soulard (always)

    3. The engagement party my neighbors hosted for us.

    4. Seeing Nate Bargatze perform downtown.

    5. Getting to serve as the Poetry Pea YouTube editor for January.

  • The Best of It: Late May Edition

    The Best of It: Late May Edition

    1. Being honored with a 2025 Soulard Star award at this year’s membership party.
    2. The success of this year’s rummage sale.
    3. It’s iced tea season.
    4. The Roaring exhibition currently running at the St. Louis Art Museum.
    5. Getting to show Texas friends around the neighborhood.
  • Soulard Haiku Walks Launch in October

    Soulard Haiku Walks Launch in October

    I’m thrilled to announce that next month, I’m launching a quarterly ginko (haiku walk) series around the Soulard neighborhood. The first event takes place on Saturday, October 26th at 9:30 a.m. It’s free, family-friendly, and open to anyone in the St. Louis area.

    I’ve wanted to start hosting ginkos in St. Louis for over a year now, but with everything else I have going on, it kept getting pushed to the back burner. Finally, though, I realized I could start hosting them in conjunction with the Soulard Restoration Group Community Involvement & Events Committee.

    Here are my goals for the series:

    1. Provide free haiku education in a digestible format.
    2. Provide space for people to practice writing haiku without worrying about critique or judgment.
    3. Create a family- and beginner-friendly event.
    4. Explore Soulard and learn about its unique history.
    5. Recognize that haiku can be written in any environment, and that urban spaces are just as legitimate haiku spaces as pastoral ones.

    We will meet at the Soulard Community Garden and spend 90 minutes learning about haiku, walking, exploring, and writing. The event concludes at the historic Soulard Market, a great place to explore at the conclusion of events.

    If you have any haikurious friends in the St. Louis area, forward this post along to them!

  • The Best of It: Summer Events Edition

    The Best of It: Summer Events Edition

    1. Attending Haiku North America
    2. Seeing West Side Story at the Muny
    3. My first Cardinals game!
    4. Seeing the corpse flower bloom at the Missouri Botanical Garden
    5. SerbFest
  • The Best of It: Summer Restaurant Meals Edition

    The Best of It: Summer Restaurant Meals Edition

    1. The gnocchi with pesto (seasonal special) at Dominic’s (No photo, sorry . . . It was the kind of dining establishment too fancy for millennial food pic nonsense.)
    2. The smash tacos and split and melt at Mac’s Local Eats
    3. The spicy goat cheese toast and the fancy avocado toast at Goshen Coffee
    4. The barbecue chicken salad at City Coffee and Creperie
    5. The waffle & chicken at Taste of Belgium (Cincinatti)
  • Support the Missouri Haiku Project

    Support the Missouri Haiku Project

    I’m excited to help spread the word about the Missouri Haiku Project, an initiative by Maryfrances Wagner, the poet laureate of Missouri. Maryfrances is accepting haiku from poets across the state to share on social media and in public venues. Many poets and teachers are offering workshops as well. The project runs until May of 2023, but why wait? Let’s spend the last of winter and all of spring celebrating haiku! Read on for Maryfrances’ guidelines, as well as all the other ways you can participate!

    All information below comes from Maryfrances Wagner. If you want to send her your haiku or contact her about other ways to participate, her address is in the guidelines.

  • The Best of It: Six More Weeks of Winter Edition

    The Best of It: Six More Weeks of Winter Edition

    1. Southwest Diner
    2. I’m grateful that my Austin friends survived yet another infrastructure-destroying ice storm.
    3. Taking barre classes.
    4. Mardi Gras season has arrived in Soulard!
    5. Regardless of what the groundhog said, according to the haiku calendar, it’s already spring.