Poet Profile

Larry Kimmel

I hold degrees form Oberlin Conservatory and Pittsburgh University, and have worked at everything from steel mills to libraries. I have written poetry since the late 1960's and was aware of haiku and had written some as far back as 1976 when I published several in the magazine Dragonfly. But it was in 1995, when working on the camera-ready copy of a book of haiku and tanka by Carol Purington, that I came to see how the haiku form was the answer to certain poetic needs I had. Although I had been much influenced by haiku through the years, writing an ever more concise and imagistic style, I had not realized that it was just the form for those many small but significant events that I had been holding in mind or in notebooks, for years, waiting for a poem in which to use them. "Why wait?" I thought. "They're already haiku moments, so why not express them as such?" And so I have.

Awards and Other Honors: Between the years 1995 - 2000, I placed in a generous number of contests, the most significant, to me, were the Best of Issue for Senryu in Modern Haiku XXX:1 (1999); and Best of Issue for Haiku in Modern Haiku XXXI:2 (2000); Woodnotes Award (Summer 1996); First Prize (with Carol Purington), Haiku Poets of Northern California International Rengay Contest (1996); Second Prize, The Haiku Award with still, a journal of short verse (Spring 1998). I also shared the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award Honorable Mention with Carol Purington for a spill of apples: a collection of tan-renga (2000). I edited Paperclips: An Anthology of Poems Commemorating the 2001 Haiku North America Conference, with Carol Purington and Michael Dylan Welch. Since 2000 I have ceased to enter contests. The joy of the process and the sharing of my take on life in the various haiku and tanka journals being award and honor enough. Anthologies: up against the window (Red Moon Press 1999); snow on water (Red Moon Press 1999); the thin curve (Red Moon Press 2000); big sky (Red Moon Press 2006); Voices and Echoes (HSA Members’ Anthology 2001); How to Haiku (Tuttle Publishing 2002); Nami: an anthology of the Haiku Poets Society of Western Massachusetts (2003); This Wood Sang Out (The Literacy Project of western Massachusetts 1995); The Five-Hole Flute (Modern English Tanka Press 2006); The Dreaming Room (Modern English Tanka Press 2007); Landfall (Modern English Tanka Press 2007); Ash Moon Anthology (Modern English Tanka Press 2008); The Tanka Prose Anthology (Modern English Tanka Press 2008); Fire Pearls (M. Kei, Publisher 2006); Sixty Sunflowers (TSA Members’ Anthology 2006-2007); Take Five (Modern English Tanka Press 2010); the tanka anthology (Red Moon Press 2003); Morning Song (St. Martin’s Press 2011).

Books Published: A Small Silent Ordeal (novel: University Editions 1993); alone tonight (Winfred Press 1998 ); the necessary fly (Winfred Press 2001); a river years from here: haibun & poems (Winfred Press 2005); Two Books: Branch after Branch & As Far As Thought Can Reach (Winfred Press 2007); Betrayal On Maple Street (short stories: Winfred Press 2007); this hunger, tissue-thin (Modern English Tanka Press 2008); Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses (Modern English Tanka Press 2009); The Piercing Blue of Sirius (Winfred Press 2009); Collected Poems 1968 - 2008 (Winfred Press 2010); Soap Hollow Memoirs (Winfred Press 2011); shards and dust (bottle rockets press 2014); outer edges (Stark Mountain Press 2015); thunder and apple blossoms (bottle rockets press 2017); Collected Haiku 1997 - 2017 (Stark Mountain Press 2017). Collaborative Books Published: a spill of apples, with Carol Purington (Winfred Press 2003); A Kind of Knowing: conversations with spiritual healer, Floyd McAusland; compiled & edited by Larry Kimmel (Winfred Press 2007); Blue Smoke, with Sheila Windsor (Stark Mountain Press 2016).

a snake released –
     the feel of it
          stays in my hand . . .

dear fly
we can’t go on like this

maternity ward – 
mine the only home-picked
wildflower bouquet

where the small lake
     leaks away . . .
          a tea-dark gurgle

midnight
say the prayer
take the pill

watching the loggers work
           I rub my paper cut

Credits: “a snake released” - South by Southeast 3: 3 (1996); “maternity ward” - Haiku Headlines 14:2 (2001); “midnight” - RAW NerVz Haiku I:3 (2001); “dear fly” - Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology (2007); “where the small lake” - Poetry in the Light (Spring 2002); “watching the loggers work” - South by Southeast 4: 2. (1997).