Poet Profile

Annette Makino

Annette Makino is an artist and haiku poet who draws inspiration from the natural beauty of Northern California and day-to-day life with her family. She creates paintings and collages and combines them with original haiku and other words. In 2011 she launched an art business, Makino Studios, to share her Japanese-inspired art. Annette’s poems and artwork regularly appear in the top journals and anthologies of haiku and haiga in English.
Growing up with a Japanese father and a Swiss mother, Annette has lived in Japan and Europe. She has a degree in international relations from Stanford University and brings to her work more than thirty years of experience in writing and graphic design. Annette lives on a redwood-covered hillside in Arcata, California with her husband, two children, and a dog.

Awards and Other Honors:

Annette's poems have taken honors in the Touchstone Awards, the Harold G. Henderson haiku contest, the Gerald Brady senryu contest, the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, the Porad Haiku Award, and the Jane Reichhold Prize, among others.

Books Published:

Makino has published three limited edition art books of her haiga: Aha! Haiku Insights (Makino Studios, 2011); True Love Comes on Paws: Haiku for Dog Lovers (Makino Studios, 2011); and Rich on the Tongue: Honeybee Haiku (Makino Studios, 2011). These were handmade using Japanese and other specialty papers, and bound in a traditional Japanese style. In 2021 she published her first full-length book, Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku, featuring her watercolor haiga (published by Makino Studios).

home from errands—
a hero's welcome
from the dog

what remains
of the mountain
sand between my toes

cowlick
some part of me
still wild

long before language the S of the river

for better or for worse
our lights and darks
tumbling together

fox tracks . . .
who was I before
I was tamed?

Credits:

"home from errands" - Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 (Winter/Spring 2013); "cowlick" - tinywords issue 13.2 (September 17, 2013); "for better or for worse" - The Heron’s Nest Vol. XVI No. 1 (March 2014); "what remains" - With Cherries on Top (Press Here, 2012); Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology (2013); “long before language” - Touchstone Individual Poem Award 2020; First place; Porad Award, 2020; “fox tracks” - The Heron’s Nest, Vol. XVII, No. 1: March 2015; Galaxy of Dust, The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2015.