Poet Profile

Lorin Ford

Growing up first in the Seaford Beach/Kananook Creek area and then in Cann River in Croajingolong country, East Gippsland, formed Lorin’s sense of belonging to the natural world. Lorin began writing haiku in 2004. She served on the judging panel for the Haiku Dreaming Awards (2009), on the The Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Books Awards Panel (2010, 2011 and 2012) and was co-judge with Lee Gurga for the H.S.A.’s 2018 Henderson Haiku Awards. She was haiku editor for the first nine (quarterly) issues of Notes From the Gean (2009 – 2011) and subsequently publisher of A Hundred Gourds (2011 – 2016) where she served as haiku editor, features editor, managing editor and in other editorial roles. In 2014 she established the Red Kelpie Haiku Group (Melbourne, Australia), convening four meetings each year until the group was broken up subsequent to its twentieth meeting in June 2019.

Awards and Other Honors:

First place, 6th and 7th paper wasp Jack Stamm Awards (2005 and 2006); first prize Shiki Salon Annual Haiku Awards, 2005. [free format category] (2005); First Prize, The Haiku Hut Haiku Contest (2006); Roadrunner Scorpion Prize #17 (2009); First Place, Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards (2009); First Prize, The Haiku Foundation's HaikuNow! Contest [Contemporary category] (2010); Winners and runners-up, The Haiku Calendar Competition (Snapshot Press, 2010 and 2011); First Prize, the Katikati Haiku Competitions (2012 and 2014); First Prize FreeXpresSion Haiku Contest (2014); First place AHS haiga kukai [non-seasonal] (2017); Second place, Autumn Moon Haiku Contest (2017); Best Haiku and First Runner-up Senryu in Shamrock Haiku Journal Readers' Choice Awards (2013); Presence #45 Best-of-Issue Award (2012) and runners-up in Presence Best-of-issue Awards in issues #37, #39, #40, #43, #44, #49, #50, #53 & #54. Lorin's haiku ‘slow day’ was commended in the 2010 Presence Award and she was honoured as Presence Focus Poet 37 (Presence #53, 2015). Other awards include: Runner-up in the 2010 Lyrical Passion Haiku Pen Contest; runner-up in The Haiku Foundation's HaikuNow! Contest [innovative category] (2011); runners-up in The Haiku Foundation's HaikuNow! Contest [contemporary & innovative categories] (2013); runner-up in Living Haiku Anthology Haiku Contest (2016).
Anthologies: Lorin's haiku have been included in the Second and Third Australian Haiku Anthologies (2005 and 2012); the Red Moon Anthologies white lies (2008); where the wind turns (2009); evolution (2010); A New Resonance 7 (2011);carving darkness (2011); nothing in the window (2012); Fear of Dancing (2013); Big Data (2014); and dust devils (2016). Other anthologies to include her haiku are: Montage: The Book (The Haiku Foundation, 2010); Haiku 21, Haiku 2013 and Haiku 2014 (Modern Haiku Press, 2012 - 2014); Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton & Co. 2013); Where the River Goes (Snapshot Press, 2013); Still Heading Out: an anthology of Australian & New Zealand haiku (Paper Wasp Press, 2013); Nest Feathers (The Heron’s Nest Press, 2015); A Vast Sky (Tancho Press, 2015); naad anunaad (Vishwakarma Publications, 2016); and The Wonder Code (Girasole Press, 2017).

Books Published:

a wattle seedpod (Post Pressed, Teneriffe, Qld, Australia, 2008); e-chapbooks: what light there is (3Lights Gallery, 2009) and A Few Quick Brushstrokes, a winner of the Snapshot Press e-chapbook competition, 2011. All three publications are available online, free of charge.

evening primrose . . .
   hairpins working loose
   from her bun

on a bare twig rain beads what light there is

seashells―
I sort through
my childhood

the bent nail
   where garlic hung . . .
   winter moon

bushfire moon
the calligraphy
of charred trees

Uluru
  barefoot children
    kick at stones

Credits:

"evening primrose" - Simply Haiku 6:3 (2008); "seashells" - The Heron’s Nest X:2 (2008); "bushfire moon" - Simply Haiku 4:1(2006); "on a bare twig" - Shamrock Haiku Journal 3 (2007); "the bent nail - The Heron's Nest X:4 (2008); "Uluru" - 10th paper wasp Jack Stamm Anthology (2009).