Poet Profile

w. f. owen

W. F. Owen was born in 1947 in Austin, Texas. He resides in Antelope, California, just outside Sacramento and currently is a Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Sacramento. His main teaching interests include interpersonal communication and the role of artistic communication in personal development. He was educated at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializing in speech and English education, and at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he received a PhD in Speech Communication in 1982. Bill has published haiku, senryu and haibun in such journals as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Acorn, bottle rockets, Mayfly and Contemporary Haibun.

Awards and Other Honors: First Place, Haiku Society of America's Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award for Haiku (2004); First Place, Haiku Society of America's Gerald Brady Memorial Award for Senryu (2002 & 2003); Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award for Best Haibun Book (small events: haibun by w. f. owen, 2008); Third Place, Haiku Society of America's Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award for Haiku (2001).  Bill was a featured poet in A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2001) and, over the years, his work has been selected as some of the "best of year" published in the annual series, Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku. He was a featured reader at the 2003 Haiku Poets of Northern California's Two Autumns Reading and edited the Two Autumns chapbook If I Met Bashô in 2005. As President of the Central Valley Haiku Club (California), he co-edited the club's three chapbooks: blink, feel of the handrail, and Tangled in Dreams.  He also served as Haibun Editor for the online journal Simply Haiku for two years.

Books Published: Haiku Notebook  [Second Edition Ebook] (Smashwords.com [and all Ebook vendors], 2010); Small Events [Second Edition Ebook] (Smashwords.com, 2010); small events: haibun by w. f. owen (Red Moon Press, 2007); haiku notebook (LuLu.com, 2007).

Indian summer
a spent salmon
washes ashore

another argument unfolds the futon 

aftershock
the picture on the wall
straightens

cold front
the honey jar releases
its lid

on the bank
fish holding the curve
of the bucket

Indian summer
a fish slips through
the gill net

Credits: "Indian summer" - First Place, Haiku Society of America's Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award for Haiku (2004); Frogpond XXVIII:1 (2005); "aftershock" - First Place, Haiku Society of America's Gerald Brady Memorial Award for Senryu (2003); Frogpond XXVII:1 (2004); "on the bank" - Frogpond XXV:I (2002); A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2001); "another argument" - bottle rockets 4; A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2001); "cold front" - Acorn 5 (2000); A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2001); "Indian summer" - Third Place, Haiku Society of America's Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award for Haiku (2001); Frogpond XXV:1 (2002).