Poet Profile

Pearl Pirie

Pearl Pirie is a Quebec writer of poetry and fiction. She has four poetry collections published, most recently footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). A past-president of KaDo, an Ottawa-area haiku and tanka group, she has been writing haiku since the 90s. Poems have been published in Haiku Canada Review, Bottle Rockets, A Hundred Gourds and Frogpond as well as in Broadsheets: Overwintering What Keeps (phafours, 2020), Salt Stains (Haiku Canada Review, Feb 2016), and Place-keeping (phafours, 2015).

Awards and Other Honors:

Winner of the 2017 Haiku Canada Ginko walk, Lampman Award for best National Capital Region poetry collection in 2015 for the pet radish, shrunken (book*hug, 2015). Her haiku in the Brick Books History of Canadian Haiku [May 2015]. Her book Thirsts was the winner of the 2011 Robert Kroetsch Award for innovative Poetry 2011. She was deemed an upcoming poet to watch as a Hot Ottawa Voice 2008. Her poem 3rd Place in the Ray Burrell Poetry Contest 2007, Honourable Mention in the Ray Burrell Poetry Contest 2006 and she was a John Newlove Award finalist in 2003.

Books Published:

Water loves its bridges (Alfred Gustav Press, 2020), Not Quite Dawn (Éditions des petits nuages, 2020), Eldon, letters (above/ground press, 2019).
Poems in: Haiku in Canada: History, Poetry, Memoir by Terry Ann Carter (Ekstasis Editions, 2020); Moving Meditation, ed. by Lynne Jambor (2021); The Wanderer Brush: Haiga of Ion Codrescu (Red Moon Press, Sept. 2020); a hole in the light: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2018 Red Moon Press, July 2020; Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Haiku and Related Forms, ed. by Terry Ann Carter (Wintergreen Studios, 2011); Painting Sunlight: A Trilingual Canadian Haiku Anthology (Wah, 2015); Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, ed. by Penny Harter and Scott Wiggerman (Dos Gatos Press, 2013).

peonies
held up by string―
dad’s chin drops

my height
in an icicle
gone at noon

tulip sprouts
tip their soil―
a shirtless runner

snap snap of stems
yesterday’s red lilies
in the hail

the crow
our shadows inside
the forest’s

the hawk
being eaten
by fog

Credits:

“peonies” - Wordless: Haiku Canada 40 Years of Haiku, Ekstasis Editions, 2017; “my height” - A Hundred Gourds Issue 4:4, Sept. 2015; “tulip sprouts”- Frogpond vol. 37:2, 2014; “snap snap of stems” - Painting Sunlight: A Trilingual Canadian Haiku Anthology, Wah, 2015; “the crow” - Halibut, July 2018; “the hawk” - The Touch of a Moth, Scrivener Press, 2012.