Poet Profile

Paul Cordeiro

Began to earnestly write haiku around 1978. Robert Barboza and I founded the free verse and haiku journal Two Trees in the spring of 1979. Placed haiku in Dragonfly, Modern Haiku, and The Piedmont Literary Review. Lorraine Lopes and I adopted two beagles around 2005. You could say the pack brought me back to Japanese short forms. A cairn terrier, a shepard mix that is back with his original owners, and two cats also inspired sketches from Swifts Beach. I now live with my 93 year old mom, union-framer son and a yorkshire terrier in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Recent ku appear in paper wasp, Clouds Peak, a procession of ripples, The Heron's Nest, and Notes From The Gean. Am a contributor to the AHA and TCP poetry forums.

Awards and Other Honors: Received a Massachusetts and Dartmouth Cultural Council grant in 2016 to do a poetry circle for six weeks.

Books Published: Bare Earth [a selected haiku/tanka chapbook] (2013).

the newspaper open
a moth rests
on my knuckle hairs

autumn rain
the spider rides a napkin
back outside

wildflowers
my beagle stretches up
to sniff a mountain

fender bender
he apologizes with coffee
stains on his tie

dating my teeth
she finds fault
with a crooked one

beach lane
a goose pumps through
leaving its call behind

Credits: "the newspaper open"--The Heron's Nest VIII:4 (2006); a procession of ripples (online anthology, 2006); "wildflowers"-- paper wasp 13:4 (2007); "dating my teeth" - clouds peak 2 (2006); "autumn rain"-- Notes From The Gean 4 (2009); "fender bender" - clouds peak 1 (2006); "beach lane"-- paper wasp 12:3 (2006).