Haiku hokku's poetic value. One of the first advocates of English-language hokku was the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. In "A Proposal to American Poets," published in the "Reader" magazine in February 1904, Noguchi gave a brief outline of the hokku and some of his own English efforts, ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets!" At about the same time the poet Sadakichi Hartmann was publishing original English-language hokku, as well as other Japanese forms in both English and French. In France, haiku was introduced by Paul-Louis Couchoud around 1906. Couchoud's articles were read by early Imagist
Haiku Japanese masters and American and Canadian contemporary haiku authors. The former president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is a "haijin" (, haiku poets) and known as "Haiku Herman." He published a book of haiku in April 2010. In the early 20th century, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore composed haiku in Bengali. He also translated some from Japanese. In Gujarati, Jhinabhai Desai 'Sneharashmi' popularized haiku and remained a popular haiku writer. In February 2008, the World Haiku Festival was held in Bangalore, gathering "haijin" from all over India and Bangladesh, as well as from Europe and the United States. In