Poet Profile

Charles Trumbull

Charles Trumbull was born in Michigan, grew up in New Mexico, and was educated at Yale and Notre Dame universities. Trained as a specialist in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, he worked in jobs that had to do with American-Russian communication at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. When the U.S.S.R. disappeared, he jumped over to a job as Director of Yearbooks at Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., in Chicago, from which he was retired in 2007. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Charlie got reacquainted with haiku in 1991, literally on a bet. Immediately bitten by the haiku bug, he has since served as newsletter editor for the Haiku Society of America (HSA) from 1996-2002, HSA president (2004-2005), and HSA Historian (2010-present). He was a founder of Chi-ku, the Chicago-area haiku club, an organizer of Haiku North America/Chicago (1999), and proprietor of Deep North Press, a publisher of haiku books with 14 titles in print. Since March 2006, he has been editor of Modern Haiku, the oldest haiku journal outside Japan. For several years he has been compiling the Haiku Database, which includes a computerized collection of published haiku in English (about 210,000 as of early 2010), a bibliography of haiku titles (the book portion is available on The Haiku Foundation Web site), and other materials of use to haiku researchers.

Awards and Other Honors: Charlie's haiku and critical essays have appeared in publications in ten countries, won several haiku contests, and been frequently anthologized.

welcoming me home
at the train station
someone else's basset

between Lake Erie
and the nuclear station
fireflies

the swell of her breast
against the watered silk
summer moon

late to the office
my desk already piled high
with zucchini

pansies     we smile back

night terminus
on the platform
unbroken snow

Credits: "welcoming me home" - Snapshots 6 (1999); "the swell of her breast" - Modern Haiku 33:1 (2002); "pansies" - Modern Haiku 33:2 (2002); "between Lake Erie" - First Prize, Convention on Water, River, Lake and Sea (Japan, 2001); "late to the office" - South by Southeast 6:1 (1999); "night terminus" - Fallen Snow: Haiku for the Winter (Cedar Falls, Iowa: Eight Pound Tiger Press, 1996).