Poet Profile

William M. Ramsey

William McCrea Ramsey (Bill) was born in Bethlehem, PA, and grew up in Schenectady, NY. Bill received his undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts at Bates College in Maine, and received his Master's and PhD in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC. He taught writing and American Literature courses at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, NC, and at Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, AL. He also taught for 24 years at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, until his retirement. Bill was also an internationally recognized Haiku poet, and he wrote four chapbooks of Haiku, Haibun, and other poems, which he published in over 250 scholarly poetry journals. Other poetry has appeared in Chiron Review, Christian Century, Commonweal, Cumberland Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and others.

William passed away at age 76, on April 19, 2022, after a long decline with Parkinsonism and Dementia.

my path to the path
to the cabin in the woods―
          to use loneliness 

(umbrellas rising, 2021)

Awards and Other Honors:

Honorable Mention (haiku), Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards for This Wine (Deep North Press, 2002); First Place (haibun), Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards for Ascend with Care (Leap Press, 2003); First Place, still Haiku Competition (spring 1998) for "the dead boy" [published in still 2:2 (1998)]; some best-of-issue and runner-up awards for haiku and haibun.

Books Published:

This Wine [haiku] (Deep North Press, 2002); Ascend with Care [haibun] (Leap Press, 2003); More Wine [haiku] (Red Moon Press, 2010); umbrellas rising: Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2021).

the dead boy
on a Rwandan road
as i eat shrimp

   confronting the dark
a firefly
   illumines its guts

the wheat field
walking into it
i shrink

   veering out of fog
into fog
   a gull’s life

slave cemetery
i scrape the moss to find
no name

    harvest moon
my ashes
   still wrapped in flesh

    the light turning green
against a vast night―
      my turn to go

pruning roses―
not earning money
not spending it

    reading a poem
of urbane intelligence
       how dead it is

a firefly’s gleam
plumbing the cosmos
just that much

Credits:

"the dead boy" - First Place, still Haiku Competition (spring 1998); still 2.2 (1998); "the wheat field" - Heron Quarterly 2.3 (1998); "slave cemetery" - South by Southeast 3.1 (1996); "confronting the dark" - South by Southeast 16.3 (2000); "veering out of fog" - Presence 39 (2009); "harvest moon" - South by Southeast 6.2 (1999); “the light turning green” – More Wine (2010); “pruning roses” – Modern Haiku 28.2 (Summer 1997); “reading a poem” – Modern Haiku 40.3 (Autumn 2009); “a firefly’s gleam” – umbrellas rising: Haiku (2021).