Poet Profile

Adelaide B. Shaw

Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Tarrytown, NY. She has been creating Japanese poetic forms–haiku, haibun, tanka, tanka prose and photo haiga since 1968 and has been published widely. Adelaide also writes fiction and non-fiction and has been published in several journals. Some of her published Japanese short form poetry is posted on her blog White Petals.

Awards and Other Honors:

Adelaide has received awards and honors in several venues, placing 1st, 2nd, 3rd or honorable mentions in contests, or receiving special recognition by Modern Haiku, Arizona State Poetry Society, Western World Haiku Society, World Haiku Review, Suruga Baika Haiku Festival, International Kusamakura Haiku Competition, Simply Haiku, Kaji Aso Studio, Shadow Poetry, Haiku Presence, The Heron’s Nest, moonset, Haiku Reality, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Red Moon Press Anthologies, The Golden Triangle Haiku Street Display and Daily Haiku. She received Third Place, the Mildred Kanterman Award for Books of Merit (Haiku Society of America). She was a featured poet in New Resonance 3, featured poet in Presence, speaker at a HSA conference, Spotlight poet HSA newsletter, and a workshop leader on Triveni Haikai India. She has also been a guest editor and a contest judge.

Books Published:

An Unknown Road (Modern English Tanka Press, 2008) [Third place, The Mildred Kanterman Award for Books of Merit, Haiku Society of America] (2009); The Distance I’ve Come (2019), Travel Souvenirs (2020) and Ancient History (2023) - published by Cyberwit Press and available on Amazon.

winter sunshine
eating a tangerine
section by section

clothes dried on the line―
a spring morning
still in the folds

outdoor market―
shoppers with bags
full of summer

end of the day―
just the cold wind
to remember

wet soil
sliding through my fingers
an earth worm

fading blue sky―
insect voices
find their rhythm

Credits:

[in present or earlier versions] "winter sunshine" - Magnapoets (Autumn/Winter Anthology, 2009); "outdoor market" - Taj Mahal Review (June 2009); "the wet soil" - Mayfly 46 (2008); "clothes dried on the line" - Simply Haiku 2:2 (2004) [Results of New Year's Photo-Haiku Kukai]; "end of the day" - Frogpond Vol. 30:1 (2007); "fading blue sky" - Acorn 20 (2008).