Deborah P Kolodji (born Deborah Pauline Anderson) died July 21, 2024 in Temple City, California). She battled cancer and various health complications over the past several years.
American technical consultant, poet, and haiku workshop leader. Author of four chapbooks of poetry (two haiku), an e-chapbook of scifaiku, and a Touchstone Distinguished Book of haiku, she was the California Regional Coordinator of the Haiku Society of America, served on the Board of Directors for Haiku North America and as the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group. She was a member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, Haiku Canada, the British Haiku Society, and the California State Poetry Society. She co-organized the 2013 Haiku North America Conference on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA), she was the first editor of Dwarf Stars, a collection of the best short-short speculative poetry of the previous year (which is used to determine the Dwarf Stars Award), and created, with Samantha Henderson, the SFPA online journal Eye to the Telescope. Kolodji’s e-chapbook, Tug of a Black Hole, won 2nd Place in the chapbook category of the 2022 SFPA Elgin Awards, and in 2023 she was honored as recipient of the inaugural SFPA President’s Lifetime Service Award.
Debbie has published more than 1000 haiku in publications such as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Bottle Rockets, A Hundred Gourds, Acorn, Rattle, and Mayfly, as well as speculative poetry in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Grievous Angel, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Tales of the Unanticipated, Tales of the Talisman, and Dreams and Nightmares. She had also published short stories in THEMA and Tales of the Talisman and a short memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her work has been anthologized in such publications as The Rhysling Anthology, Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: Poetry of Recovery, New Resonance 4: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, and The Nebula Awards Showcase 2015. Her last book Vital Signs from Cuttlefish Books appeared on February 17, 2024).
Awards and Other Honors:
Virgil Hutton Haiku Memorial Award (2004); a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2016 for the volume highway of sleeping towns (Shabda Press, 2016); 2nd Place WHC Global Haiku Tournament (2002); 2nd Place Kiyoshi & Kiyoko Tokutomi Memorial Contest (2009); Honorable Mention Tokutomi Haiku Contest (2014); 2nd Place in the chapbook category of the 2022 SFPA Elgin Awards.
thistles in bloom
grandmother's needle threaded
with purple
roadside wildflowers
a cop's bright lights
in my rearview mirror
birdsong
I begin the paragraph
for the third time
the world so big
without you in it―
summer sea
morning fog
on the coastal route
wild mustard
floating purple
my daydreams follow
the water hyacinth
orionids―
even the sky can't sleep
tonight
moon bridge
a woman broken
by spring ripples
highway
of sleeping towns
the Milky Way
scented breeze
her life
in brush strokes
Credits:
"thistles in bloom" - World Haiku Review (July 2002); Judge's Selection, World Haiku Club Global Tournament; "roadside wildflowers" - Mayfly issue 45 (2008); “birdsong” – Frogpond 30-1, 2007; "the world so big" - Yuki Teikei Membership Anthology (2007); "morning fog" - The Heron's Nest 11:4 (2009); “floating purple” – Brass Bell July 2014; “orionids” and “moon bridge” – Highway of Sleeping Towns, Shabda Press, 2016; “highway” – Rattle #47 Spring 2015; “scented breeze” – The Heron's Nest Vol. XXVI, No 1: March 2024.
