Poet Profile

Allan Burns

Creator of the Montage series featured on The Haiku Foundation Web site, author of the award-winning haiku collection distant virga, co-editor of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, and author/editor of Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku, Allan Burns has published haiku in many journals. He is editor of the e-publication muttering thunder: an annual of fine haiku and art [artwork by Ron C. Moss], at http://mutteringthunder.weebly.com/. Among his hobbies are birding, hiking, and camping. He lives on the west side of Colorado Springs, under the looming majesty of Pikes Peak, with his wife Theresa and their companion animals.

Awards and Other Honors: Runner-up, Scorpion Prize for Roadrunner 7:3 (Selected by Lee Gurga, 2007); Editor's Choice, moonset 3:2 (2007); Honorable Mention (with Christopher Herold and Ron Moss), The HSA Bernard Lionel Einbond Renku Competition (2009); Editors' Choice, South by Southeast 17:1 (2010) and 19:1 (2012); THF Touchstone Awards, 2010, for Montage; Honorable Mention, Best Anthology, HSA Merit Book Awards, 2011, for Montage; Honorable Mention, THF Touchstone Awards, 2011, for distant virga; Third Place, HSA Merit Book Awards, 2012, for distant virga; Winner, The Snapshot Press eChapbook Awards, 2012, for thronging cranes; THF Touchstone Awards, 2013, for Where the River Goes; THF Touchstone Awards, 2013, for Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years; Best Anthology, HSA Merit Book Awards, 2014, for Where the River Goes; Honorable Mention, Turtle Light Press Haiku Chapbook Contest 2014, for Earthlings. Allan's work has been anthologized in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (six times); A New Resonance 6: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2009); seed packets: an anthology of flower haiku (bottle rockets press, 2010); Haiku 21: an anthology of contemporary English-language haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 2011); Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013); and other publications.

Books Published: A Thematic Guide to American Poetry (Greenwood Press, 2002); Montage: The Book [Editor] (The Haiku Foundation, 2010); distant virga (Red Moon Press, 2011); Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years [Co-Editor] (W. W. Norton, 2013); Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku [Editor] (Snapshot Press, 2013); Earthlings [e-book; artwork by Ron C. Moss] (Muttering Thunder, 2015) available as a free download at http://mutteringthunder.weebly.com/downloads.html..

elf owl . . .
the moon 1%
of full

far along the desert road a man under his hat

Comanche grassland
ruins of the mission cast
the only shadow

nowhere to run
from the skeleton within—
windmill ravens

the lab monkey
biting his bars
biting himself

morning in the clouds . . .
following a wash
wherever it leads

Credits: "elf owl " - bottle rockets 30 (2014); " Comanche grassland" - Modern Haiku 24.3 (2011); " the lab monkey" - Presence 49 (2014); " far along" - Acorn 31 (2013); " nowhere to run" - bottle rockets 28 (2013); " morning in the clouds" - Modern Haiku 45.1 (2014).