Poet Profile

Kieran O'Connor

I first heard about haiku when I was living in Japan. At the time I didn't think much of them, as I went straight to the most highbrow of poems in the translations by R.H. Blyth. They were way out of my league at the time, and I simply just didn't 'get' them. I love these books now, but it took time to appreciate them. I was reintroduced to haiku when I read Richard R. Powell's Wabi Sabi for Writers which contained haiku in English, which was more accessible to me. My Japanese girlfriend then introduced me to modern Japanese haiku, which were printed on the back of the tea bags she used to drink. A popular Japanese green tea company called Ito En holds an annual haiku contest, and they print the winning poems on their products. I now translate haiku from the younger divisions of this contest on my website High School Haiku. I hope to introduce people to the haiku world through these haiku, which, although not so highbrow, are still charming and are more accessible to beginners

Awards and Other Honors: The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems 2012; nothing in the window: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2013)

winter night
reaching a page
someone has folded

winter dusk
how can there be
so much sky

alone in the bush
just me
and a blowfly

too much sky
where the tree
used to be

old-world garden
someone has left a rose
on a bench

autumn sunset
the cockatoo turns
to bronze

Credits: "winter night" - The Heron's Nest XIV:4 (December 2012); The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems 2012; nothing in the window: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2013); "alone in the bush" - The Heron's Nest XIV:1 (March 2012); "old-world garden" - Frogpond 36:2 (Spring/Summer 2013); "winter dusk" - Acorn 29 (Fall, 2012); "too much sky" - The Heron's Nest XIV:4 (December 2012); "autumn sunset" - windfall 2.