Poet Profile

Gabi Greve

Gabi Greve (formal name: Dr. med. Gabriele Greve) was born in Germany in 1948. She graduated as a medical doctor at Heidelberg University. She has been living in Japan since 1977 as a freelance translator and writer about Buddhist Art, her second speciality. She and her husband now live in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, where she runs a “Daruma Museum” [http://darumasan.blogspot.com/]. To improve her understanding of Japanese language and culture, Gabi started to study haiku in Kamakura about 20 years ago. In 2004 she started the World Kigo Database to share her studies of Japanese culture via haiku and kigo and encourage haiku poets worldwide to collect the kigo of their regions. She does not send haiku to competitions or magazines. Her “Haiku Gallery of Life in Japan” features her self-published haiku [http://haikuandhappiness.blogspot.com/].

Awards and Other Honors: Interview with Robert Wilson, Simply Haiku, Winter 2009 [http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n4/features/Greve.html]; Daruma Gallery, Introduction by Gabi Greve: Simply Haiku (Summer 2005) [http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv3n2/haiga_Traditional/Daruma/index.html]

Daruma san—
high in the sky
a firework dances

Sitting in Silence
Daruma meditating
In Japanese

spring in the air—
earth smelling of
earth again

Credits: "Daruma san" - Simply Haiku 3:2 (2005); spring in the air" - Lishanu (Autumn 2005); "Sitting in Silence" - Simply Haiku 3:2 (2005).