Poet Profile

Hannah Mahoney

I fell in love with haiku as a child by reading In a Spring Garden, edited by Richard Lewis, with luminous illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats: “just simply alive, / both of us, I / and the poppy” (Issa). Decades later, I have circled back and have been an avid student of haiku since 2011. My work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals, and I’m a member of the Summer Street Haiku Group. I work in children’s publishing here in the Boston area.

Awards and Other Honors: Kaji Aso International Haiku Contest Senryu Award (2016); two Kaji Aso International Haiku Contest Honorable Mentions (2016); Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Contest Runner-Up (2016).

Books Published: Dream Language: For Three Voices, with Brendan Slater and Jack Galmitz (Yet to Named Free Press, 2013). Work included in C.2.2.: Anthology of Short Verse, edited by Brendan Slater and Alan Summers (Yet to Named Free Press, 2013).

New Year’s resolution
the particular yellow
of a whisked egg

taking down
the lost cat flyers
first frost

evening quiet
a single wood duck glides
with her reflection

two roads diverged
     I let the dog 
         choose

country graveyard
the oldest stones
under tall pines

night snow
my father’s handwriting
on the ornament box

Credits: “New Year’s resolution” – Modern Haiku 45:3 (2014); “evening quiet” – Acorn 37 (2015); “country graveyard” – Honorable Mention, Kaji Aso International Haiku Contest (2016); “taking down” – The Heron’s Nest 17:2 (2015); “two roads diverged” – Winner, Kaji Aso International Senryu Contest (2016); “night snow” – Modern Haiku 48:1 (2017).