Poet Profile

Rebecca Lilly

Rebecca Lilly has an M.F.A. from Cornell in creative writing and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. She works as a writer, and has published several collections of poems and two books on spiritual philosophy and practice.

Awards and Other Honors:

Lilly's collection of haiku, Shadwell Hills (Birch Brook Press, 2002), received a High Commendation from the Haiku Society of America in its annual awards. Her poetry collection, You Want to Sell Me a Small Antique (Gibbs Smith, 2002), won the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize. She was one of 17 poets featured in A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2001). Her haiku have been selected to appear in several Red Moon Pressbest-of-year anthologies, including edge of light: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2002 (Red Moon Press, 2003) and the loose thread: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2001 (Red Moon Press, 2002). In addition, an article about her, featuring some of her haiku, appeared in the October 2009 issue of Virginia Living. Some of her haiku were selected for The Piedmont Virginian (Autumn 2009), and two haiku sequences were selected for Blueline, a journal published at SUNY Potsdam.
Other awards and honors include the First Place Award in The Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award Competition (2015).

Books Published:

You Want to Sell Me a Small Antique [poetry] (Gibbs Smith 2002); Shadwell Hills [haiku] (Birch Brook Press, 2002) [released as e-book, 2012]; The Insights of Higher Awareness [spiritual philosophy and practice] (Humanics Learning, 2004; Ego and the Spiritual Self [spiritual philosophy and practice] (Humanics Learning, 2007); Light's Reservoir (Antrim House Books, 2013) [a collection of haiku on Appalachian wildflowers featuring 12 color plates by Rachel Lilly] and a companion volume, A Prism of Wings (Antrim House Books, 2013) [a collection of haiku on butterflies, with an emphasis on those found in the Eastern U.S., featuring 12 color plates by Sarah McQuilkin]; Yesterday's Footprints (Red Moon Press, 2012); Elements of a Life (Red Moon Press, 2014); Evergreen Moon (Red Moon Press, 2018), Walking, Just a Little Water (Red Moon Press, 2018), Creatures Among Us (Broadstone Books, 2019), a book of prose poetry); Aporia (Red Moon Press, 2021).

Trail curve, slippery
with rain―I never
chose to be a person

All those distant planets―
no luck keeping alive
the indoor plants

Mist the echo of horizon stringing down an infinite hole

Something remains light breaking apart the shadows that stay

Wind reshaping snowdrifts
as daylight dims―
other lives I might've lived

Winter wren's song . . .
tasting mountain clouds
in a cup of snowmelt

Credits:

“Trail curve, slippery” - Walking, Just a Little Water Red Moon Press, 2018; “Something remains” - is/let, Sept. 26, 2021; “Mist the echo” - NOON, ISSUE 14 August 2019; All those distant planets - Frogpond Vol. 44:2 Spring/Summer 2021; “Wind reshaping snowdrifts” - Modern Haiku Vol. 52:1, Winter-Spring 2021; “Winter wren's song” - Modern Haiku Vol. 52:3, Autumn 2021.