Poet Profile

Claudia Coutu Radmore

Claudia Coutu Radmore has been writing poetry in lyric and Japanese forms since the early nineties. Editor of many Haiku Canada Anthologies, member of the League of Canadian Poets, Tanka Canada, Haiku Canada, and KaDo Ottawa. Claudia was a consulting editor for Raw NerVZ and helped select tanka for Gusts, the Canadian tanka magazine. She has written renku with poets Grant Savage, Dorothy Howard, Raffael de Gruttola among others, and a series of tan renga with Mike Montreuil and Grant Savage. She was co-editor with Marco Fraticelli for the Haiku Canada Special 35th and 40th anniversary anthologies, Touch of a Moth (2012), and Wordless (2017). Her latest poetry collaboration is with Alrick Huebener, Ottawa musician: World Between Us.

The owner/editor of catkin press, she edits manuscripts, does cover design, and chooses the poets she wishes to publish. Her Japanese-form publications have been included in Carpe Diem, an Anthology of Canadian Haiku (2008), Duets (2009), Gusts, in a rengay collection edited by Mike Montreuil, all editions of Take Five; Best Tanka, Cornell University Mann’s Library, Charlotte Digregorio's Writer's Blog, Chen-ou-Liu’s NeverEnding Story (First English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku and Tanka Blog) and Leaf Shadows/ Me and You (2010), edited by Terry Ann Carter and Guy Simser, among other publications.

From 2018 to 2022, Claudia was the President of Haiku Canada and was one of the organizers of the Haiku Canada Weekends and the Haiku North America Conference in Ottawa (2009). She was one of three judges for the 2021 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Awards.

Awards and Other Honors:

Second Prize: The 2008 Francine Porad Haiku Contest; 2009 National Capital Canadian Author’s Award for Poetry; Winner: Vancouver Cherry Blossom Sakura Award (2009); Finalist: the Origami Crane Award organized by the Tree Reading Series; Accidentals (2011, Apt. 9 Press, Ottawa), won the 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award.

Her work is included in Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press, 2010), I Found It At The Movies, (Guernica 2014) and in the Canadian anthology Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press, Fall 2010). In September 2010, Claudia’s a minute or two/ without remembering was published by Two Cultures Press (North Bay, Ontario).

Her poetry has been published on Sugarmule.com, (guest edited by Susan McMaster), in CV2, Atlas Poetica, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka (every year), The Bywords Quarterly Journal, Grain, Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Arc, Filling Station, Matrix, The Queen’s Quarterly, The Windsor Review, Vallum, also in Paperplates, on Panoplyzine.com and Cede, among others, as well as in international anthologies.

Books Published:

Her most recent books are An Armor All Shine (2009), tan renga with Mike Montreuil; the tanka manuscript Blackbird’s Throat (2009); the collection Your Hands Discover Me/ Tes mains me découvrent, in English and French, was published in May 2010 by Éditions du tanka francophone, Montreal, Quebec; The business of isness (haiku) and fish spine picked clean (tanka) were published in 2017 and 2018 by Éditions des petits nuages, Ottawa; Cough of a Sloth, a chapbook of gendai was published by phaphours press, Ottawa (2017); camera obscura a chapbook was published by above ground press, Ottawa (March 2019); Lyric collections Park Ex Girl (Shoreline Press, Montreal) and rabbit (Aeolus Press, Toronto) were published in 2021, and in the fall of 2024, Shoreline published Sweet Vinegars: Wildflower poems.
A collaboration with Grant D. Savage, published by Éditions des petits nuages, (Winter, 2024 ), the heron still there consists of 500 linked tan-renga (a thousand link-and-shifts).

abandoned farm
the wild pear 
in bloom

bee buzz―
the sound of the business 
of isness

first light 
cherry blossoms 
in the birdbath

summer heat
brooding in the dark
bantam hen

for the briefest moment
before it lands
shadow of a cherry petal

sweeping away
the sand from the steps
sweeping away summer

Credits:

"abandoned farm" - Carpe Diem (2008); "first light" - Carpe Diem (2008); "for the briefest moment" - Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Sakura Award (2009); "bee buzz" - Matrix Magazine, The Zen Issue (March 2011); "summer heat" - 2nd place, Francine Porad contest (2008); "sweeping away" - Basho Festival Anthology (2004).