Book of the Week – Haiku: A Chapbook by Dan Campbell

Some collections like Dan Campbell’s Haiku: A Chapbook invites us into a way of looking. Published in 2022, this compact volume gathers haiku, monoku, and haiga that move with ease between humour, tenderness, imagination, and social observation. Although the poems range widely in subject, they are held together by an enduring curiosity about the world and by a willingness to find poetry in places where many of us might simply pass by.

Campbell, who served as The Haiku Foundation’s Digital Librarian for several years, is well known for introducing readers to overlooked treasures from the Digital Library. His own poems reveal the same attentive eye that made him such an engaging guide through the Foundation’s collections.

One of the opening poems immediately captures this imaginative reach:

albino crow
strutting across
fresh snow (p. 2)

The image is almost paradoxical. A crow usually announces itself through contrast, yet here it nearly disappears into the landscape. The poem reminds us that perception depends as much on expectation as on sight itself.

A very different poem turns toward memory and family:

Ancestry.com
my wife’s wildflower
DNA (p. 2)

The contemporary reference never overwhelms the poem. Instead, technology becomes the starting point for a celebration of individuality. “wildflower/ DNA” suggests something that cannot be fully measured or categorised, no matter how detailed the ancestry report.

Some of Campbell’s strongest poems arise from ordinary places:

ICU remedy for sleep
counting dripping IV drops
instead of sheep (p. 3)

The familiar childhood phrase is transformed by circumstance. Humour gives way to vulnerability. Without sentimentality, the poem captures the strange rhythms of illness, where even sleeplessness acquires its own counting system.

Elsewhere, a simple family keepsake carries emotional weight:

family photo album
three generations
of frowns (p. 3)

The poem invites several readings. Is the resemblance genetic, cultural, or simply the solemnity once expected in old photographs? Campbell wisely leaves the question unanswered, allowing readers to bring their own family histories to the page.

The final example comes from the monoku section:

following the river’s pilgrimage to the sea (p. 7)

The river is described as flowing and undertaking a pilgrimage. One word transforms this geography into a spiritual journey. It is a reminder that the smallest shift in language can alter the way we experience an image.

Throughout the chapbook, Campbell moves comfortably between playful imagination and moments of genuine poignancy. His poems are accessible without being predictable, inviting readers into a continuing conversation.

As you read the collection, pause over the poems that surprise you. Which image stayed with you after you turned the page? Was it because of what the poem said, or because of what it chose to leave unsaid?

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You can read the entire collection in the THF Digital Library.

The THF Digital Library can now also be found easily through the carousel on the home page, making it simpler than ever to discover books, journals, and other treasures from the archive.

Do you have a full-length or chapbook-length book published in 2021 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by the THF Digital Librarian, Vidya Premkumar, and are used with permission.