Poet Profile

Bukusai Ashagawa

A little about me. I was born in Boston, moved to Brooklyn N.Y. when I was three. After high school I ran marathons for Reebok. Then after a year I was recruited to run track for the University of Oregon. I've lived in Oregon off and on since 1984, and have spent time in Tibet. Over the last fifteen years I spent a little over two years (one 9 month stint living in a Buddhist Monastery in the Mountains North of Sapporo) of it in Japan. I come from a family of artists, my mother was a choreographer, and ballet dancer. So I too have worked off and on as an artist for most of my life. In 1996 I began to work as a truck driver. As a long haul trucker I drove over 1.6 million miles, throughout Alaska, Canada, and the lower 48. I would drive my truck for a year and then get off the road for 6 months or so to travel or complete a book.

Books Published: I've had 12 books published to date. (Check out iTunes, Amazon, blurb.Com, & ISSUU.Com under Byron Dudley & my poetry pen name Bukusai Ashagawa). My book JIKU: Komorebi... above, a thousand incandescent leaves (a book of poetry, haiku, tanka, and poekuagery) was nominated in 2010 & 2015 for the Haiku Society of America's Haiku Merit Book Award. It is in the Special Collections section of the California State Library, and the U.S. National Haiku Library. The first edition was published 2010, 2nd edition 2012 (also available on iTunes as an eBook), 3rd edition published 2013, 4th edition 2013, 5th edition 2014, and the 7th edition in 2016. In the University of Oregon’s Knight Library, in the Special Collections section, are One Million Miles: A Visual Memoir and JIKU (2012 edition). 51 additional universities throughout the Pacific Northwest have four of my books including, One Million Miles a Visual Memoir and JIKU, available in their special collections departments. (Also available at major universities worldwide on the World-cat document search). A recent article about me in my local newspaper is available at http://registerguard.com/rg/entertainment/arts/34438385-60/despite-varied-past-author-byron-dudley-always-returns-to-nature-japanese-poetry.html.csp. A free pdf copy is available of one of my essays or books of poetry (Up the Mtn) is available at ISSUU.com. (It has been translated into Italian and Portuguese). Examples of commentary, analyses, and critiques of my work may be found at https://haikucommentary.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/bukusai-ashagawas-candle/

Cherry petals draw
a visual eulogy
falling past their prime

wandering ... alone 
seeking companionship
in solitude

I pedal, past
raindrops, pummeling petals
wrung dry, by high winds

misty sheets of rain
stir slumbering clouds
on my mountain side

by candlelight
through a bedroom window
a pear blossoms

old growth
refusing to bend
in any direction

Credits: "Cherry petals draw" - Beechwood Review 1 (Summer 2015); "I pedal, past" - Beechwood Review #1 (Summer 2015); "by candlelight" - The Bamboo Hut: Journal of English-Language Tanshi (Autumn, 2015); Up the Mtn #173; "wandering ... alone" - Simply Haiku; Up the Mountain (haiku, tanka, & haiga); Chrysanthemum (Spring 2016); "misty sheets of rain" - The Bamboo Hut: Journal of English-Language Tanshi (Issue #1 for 2015); Up the Mtn #178; "old growth" - Up the Mtn #134.