Poet Profile

Mikō (Michael Smeer)

Being a Gemini, I’ve always had many interests. I was musically trained (trumpet, piano, and [jazz] guitar). I am a Buddhist and a former software engineer. I wrote my first haiku in 1993. The English language haiku and senryū are my preferred forms. I was a teacher of the Advanced Haiku Class at AllPoetry.com and the Vice President of the European Haiku Society. I am the founder of 'My Haiku Pond' & 'My Haiku Pond Academy', a Facebook community and its study group which are focused on English haikai poetry, Culture, Art, etc.

Awards and Other Honors:

First Place – Australian Haiku Society’s (AHS) Summer Solstice Haiga Kukai — Non-Seasonal Contest 2020 (Judged by Ron C. Moss).

Books Published:

Do you think? (Duoscope, 1993); Sweetest Rapture (Duoscope, 1996). Note: The second book includes my first ‘haiku’.

butterfly house―
a little boy chases
his empty finger

tambourine . . . 
the toothless busker's dog
drops the hat

tiny fingers
keep tracing her scars
kintsugi doll

slow tread . . . 
the ox pulls its weight
in moo's

zen garden
a shakuhachi fills
the midday heat

pond adventure
the children return
with frog song

Credits:

“butterfly house” – Blithe Spirit Vol. 26, No 2, May 2016; “tambourine” – On Down the Road: Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2017 (ed. LeRoy Gorman, New York: Haiku Society of America, 2017; “tiny fingers”* – hedgerow #130, April 2020; “slow tread” – Bull Headed (Bicadeideias, Portugal, September 2021); “zen garden”** – Temple (The BHS Members’ Anthology, 2021).

* Kintsugi (金継ぎ: ‘golden connection’), also called Kintsukuroi (金繕い: ‘golden reparation’), is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold- or silver-colored lacquer.
** A shakuhachi is a traditional Japanese bamboo flute.