Poet Profile

Tyson West

Tyson West has been writing for decades and only in the last 5 years has he worked in haiku and other short form poetry. He has written and published traditional western poetry including form poetry on topic such as food, the old West and speculative topics. He has also written and published fiction. In his wanderings and conversations with the magpies and coyotes who inhabit his world, he soars over a vast range of topics and in many different literary forms. With degrees from the University of Virginia, University of California, New York University, and Eastern Washington University, he is active with rental real estate which provides him with a very different perspective on reality. He has published haiku in Cattails, World Haiku Review, Haiku Journal, 50 Haikus, 3 Line Poetry, Quatrainfish, Kigo: The Seasonal Word and wrote the lead haiku used in Clockwork Kiru, An Anthology of Steampunk Haiku (Dreamscape Publishing Press 2014).

Books Published: Home-Canned Forbidden Fruit [a collection of poetry] (Gribble Press 2013); Mall of the Damned (Red Dashboard Press, 2014); and has published stories and poetry in numerous anthologies.

hours before dawn
sparrows chirp pecking holes
in the darkness

stars on a frog pond
shine upward to light
lanterns in the sky

pea tendrils
spiral up stalks
of falling snow

blue moon
the fire season glazes
in orange

swollen linden buds –
a park vagrant snores
under the dog star

the prairie graveyard
by the rye field in stubble
planted in rows

Credits: “hours before dawn” – Cattails (January 2015); “pea tendrils” - World Haiku Review (First Place Neo Classical, June 2015); “swollen linden buds” – Cattails (May 2014); “stars on a frog pond" - Three Line Poetry 32 (2015); “blue moon” – Cattails (September 2015); “the prairie graveyard”- Haiku Presence 54 (February 2016).