Poet Profile

Stephen Bailey

Stephen Bailey is a geographical, societal, and poetic fringe dweller. He resumed writing poems towards publication in 2011 after a voluntary abstention from poem-writing since 1974 following the birth of his first-born daughter. He assumed the pen-name of Hansha Teki to mark this change of direction, but resumed his birth name at the beginning of 2023 to re-engage with his former path. Of his later parallel poems, poet and translator Eric Selland stated that "Possibly the most significant development in haiku-influenced poetry in our generation, these are both intensely personal and metaphysical poems – the very heart of becoming – in which the poem exceeds its own form, attaining something much larger"
Since 2013 he has co-founded with Don Baird the Living Haiku Anthology and Under the Bashō journal while also providing web-assistance for Heliosparrow Poetry Journal and various other poetry initiatives.

Awards and Other Honors:

He is one of the poets featured in A New Resonance 11: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2019).

Books Published:

Triptych co-authored with Kala Ramesh and Don Baird (Red Moon Press, 2019); Memories of the Future co-authored with Clayton Beach (Heliosparrow Press, 2020); Bipedal Verses (Heliosparrow Press, 2020); For the Time Being (Ararua Books, 2023)-.

river fog―
a nameless ache
fills the page

last rites―
I watch her eyes
let go of me

morning prayer . . .
an orchid absorbs
the sound of bees

leaves break down a death sentence

her ankles . . .
a path into mist's
endlessness

same old valley
                         it's all
                         about me
a transfiguring
moon
                         thy kingdom
                         that is not
silences me
                         of this world

Credits:

"river fog" – Frogpond vol. 35.3 Autumn 2012; "last rites"– The Heron's Nest vol. XIV No. 3 (September 2012); "morning prayer" – Multiverses 1:1 (October 9, 2013); "leaves" – Bones no. 11 (November 2016); "her ankles" – cattails (Editor's Choice, April 2017); "same old valley" – Bones no. 23 (April 2022).