Poet Profile

Adele Kenny

Adele Kenny’s poems, reviews, and articles have been published in journals worldwide, and her poems have appeared in books and anthologies published by Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. A three-term president of the Haiku Society of America, she was a creative writing professor in the College of New Rochelle’s Graduate School, and is currently founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet Journal. Active in readings and in private and agency-sponsored workshops, she has read in the U.S., England, Ireland, and France, and has twice been a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

Awards and Other Honors: Distinguished Alumni Award, Kean University (2014); Paumanok Poetry Award, Finalist (2014); International Book Award for Poetry for What Matters (2012); Women of Excellence Award in The Arts and Humanities [Union Country Commission on the Status of Women] (2011); Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award (2007); Honorable Mention, Allen Ginsberg Awards, (2006); H. E. A. R. T. Grant [History, Education, Art, Reaching Thousands] in Poetry (1999); Art Grant, New Jersey State Council on the Arts/ Union County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs (1998-99); Tiny Poems Press, Award for Moveable Feasts (1998); Columbia Pacific University Poetry Award (1993); Museum of Haiku Literature Award (Tokyo), with M. Dylan Welch, et al for “Windswept Walk” (1992); Museum of Haiku Literature Award (Tokyo), with H. Sato, et al for “Green a Glitter” (1991); First Place, Renku Award, Haiku Society of America, Inc. (1990); Best-of-Issue Award, Haiku Quarterly (Spring 1990); First Place and Honorable Mention, Haiku Quarterly Competition (Autumn, 1989); First Place and Honorable Mention, Raymond Roseliep Memorial Award (1988); Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards: Honorable Mention for Castles and Dragons (1990), First Place for Migrating Geese (1987), Special Recognition Award for Between Hail Marys (1985-86), and Third Place for The Roses Open (1983-84); Poetry Fellowships, New Jersey State Council on the Arts (1987 and 1982); First Place, Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award (1984); Author’s Citations (for poetry collections Illegal Entries & An Archaeology of Ruins), New Jersey Writers Conferences (1982, 1984); Writer’s Digest Magazine Writing Competition, award for poetry (1981); Winner, Great Falls Anthology Competition Honoring William Carlos Williams (1978); New Jersey Poetry Monthly Award (1977).

Books Published: Not Asking what if [forthcoming] (Muse-Pie Press, 2016), haiku; A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing At All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015), poems; What Matters (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2011), poems; The Kite & Other Poems from Childhood (Finishing Line Press, 2008), poems; Chapbooks: A Historical Perspective (Muse-Pie Press, broadside/essay series #1, 2008), nonfiction; Staffordshire Figures: History in Earthenware 1740-1900 (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2004), nonfiction; Chosen Ghosts (Muse-Pie Press, 2001), poems; Photographic Cases: Victorian Design Sources 1840-1870 (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2001), nonfiction; Staffordshire Animals: A Collector’s Guide (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1998), nonfiction; Staffordshire Spaniels: A Collector’s Guide (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1997) nonfiction; At the Edge of the Woods (Muse-Pie Press, 1997), haiku; We Become By Being (Capuchin Province of the Stigmata of St. Francis, 1995, 2nd Edition 2002), nonfiction; The Silence and the Flame: Clare and Francis of Assisi (Muse-Pie Press, 1991), nonfiction & poems; Starship Earth (Press Here, 1990), haiku; Castles and Dragons (Muse-Pie Press, 1990), haiku; Questi Momenti (Muse-Pie Press, 1990), haiku; Counseling Gifted, Creative, and Talented Youth Through the Arts (G/C/T, 1989), educational nonfiction; Migrating Geese (Muse-Pie Press, 1987), haiku; Between Hail Marys (Muse-Pie Press, 1986), haiku; Illegal Entries (Merging Media, 1984), poems; The Roses Open (Jade Mountain Press, 1984), haiku; An Archaeology of Ruins (New Dimensions of the 80’s, 1982), poems; Notes from the Nursing Home (From Here Press, 1982), haiku; A Creative Writing Companion (New Dimensions of the 80’s, 1981), educational nonfiction.

first crickets—
the pulse 
in my wrist

between the moon
and the billboard
a jet liner rising

migrating geese:
once there was so much
to say

moonrise:
at the edge of the woods
we listen

a flurry of bats
and then
the Milky way

turning the corner
before me
my voice in the wind

Credits: “first crickets” - Haiku Mind (Patricia Donegan, ed. Shambhala Press, 2008); “migrating geese” - First Place, Harold G. Henderson Award (Haiku Society of America, 1987); “a flurry of bats” - First Place, Haiku Quarterly Award; Haiku Quarterly I:3 (1989); Silenced Spring (Haiku Canada Anthology, 1991); “between the moon and the billboard” - 42nd Street Art Project, Haiku Installations curated by Dee Evetts, Rialto West Theater Marquee; Haiku on 42nd Street: A Celebration of Poetry and Art (Clerisy Press, 2008); Tiferet (April 2014); “moonrise” - Frogpond XIII:2 (1997); Haiku Moment: An Anthology of North American Haiku (Tuttle, 1993); “turning the corner” - Frogpond VII:4 (1989).