Poet Profile

Tombo (Lorraine Ellis Harr)

Tombo was the haigo (pen name) of Lorraine Ellis Harr. Born in Sullivan, Illinois, she lived several years in North Dakota, and spent most of her life in Portland, Oregon. Her interest in haiku was sparked in 1963 when one of her earliest attempts at haiku won an honorable mention in the Japan Air Lines contest. She founded the Western World Haiku Society in 1972 and was editor of Haiku Highlights, later retitled Dragonfly: A Quarterly of Haiku, from 1972-1985. Because of her association with Dragonfly, some Japanese poets began calling her “Tombo,” Japanese for dragonfly, and she took that name as her haigo. Her haiku, senryu, renga, tanka, haibun, free verse poetry, children’s stories, and articles have been published around the world. Although she favored a traditionalist approach to haiku, she also found innovative ways to construct her poems. In Sundowners, she was one of the first American poets to present English-language haiku as a single, horizontal line. Her book 70 Sevens: Pathways of the Dragonfly offers seventy, seven-verse haiku sequences on the subject of dragonflies. In general, she favored thematically unified books of poetry as seen in these two examples as well as in her collection of haibun, China Sojourn, the winter haiku in Snowflakes in the Wind, and the farm haiku in The Red Barn. In Portland, she led the Tombo Haiku Group and offered numerous haiku workshops around the Portland area. She served as Honorary Curator for the American Haiku Archives from 2001-2002.

Books Published: Cats Crows Frogs & Scarecrows (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1975); The Red Barn: Variations on a Pastoral Theme in Haiku (For My Mother, Myrtle Hickman Ellis) (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1975); Tombo: 226 Dragonfly Haiku (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1975); Ripe Papayu & Orange Slices (After the Chinese) (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1976); Snowflakes in the Wind (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1976); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1974-1975 (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1976); The Selected Senryu of Lorraine Ellis Harr (Kanona, N.Y. : J & C Transcripts, 1976); A Flight of Herons: Haiku Seascapes & Seasons (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1977); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1976-1977 (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1978); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1978, (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1979); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1979 (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1980); Sundowners (Manchester, NH: First Haiku Press, 1980); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1980 (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1981); China Sojourn (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1981); Editor, The Anthology of Western World Haiku Society 1981 (Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1982); Pathways of the Dragonfly: Seventy/Sevens (Salt Lake City, UT: Middlewood Press, 1986); Editor, Frog Bites (Portland, OR: Pond Stars Press, 1993); Walls of Silence (Irving Street Press, 1998); Under the Roan Cliffs: A Collection of Renga [With Brad Wolthers] (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2005); Modern Narrow Roads to Matsushima [publication information missing]; Poems for Peter K. [publication information missing]; Poems for Sarah J. [publication information missing].

Until it alights
on a white daisy—just another
blue dragonfly.

Midwinter gloom—
she turns on the lights
in her doll’s house

A hot summer wind—
     shadows of the windmill blades
          flow over the grass.

Bitter cold: thread by thread
a peacock spreads its tail
on the weaver’s loom

Making plum butter;
     houseflies sticking
          to the screen door

After the snowfall
deep in the pine forest
the sound of an axe.

Indian summer
   the scarecrow’s jacket fades
      to a paler blue.

Among the white bones
of the whale’s rib cage—
the drifting sand

Midnight:
the go-go dancers
take five

an owl hoots darkness down from the hollow oak

Credits: "Until it alights" - Harr, Tombo; van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 2 (Fireside, NY: 1986); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (W.W. Norton, NY: 1999); "A hot summer wind" - Dragonfly 1:3 (1973); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 2 (Fireside, NY: 1986); Harr, 70 Sevens (1986); Hobo Spring (1998); Snow on the Water (Red Moon Anthology 1 (1974); Frogpond 21:1 (1998); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (W.W. Norton, NY: 1999); "Making plum butter" - Modern Haiku 4:2 (1973); "Indian summer" - Haiku West 8:1 (1974) Haiku West 8:2 (1975); Harr, Cats Crows Frogs & Scarecrows (1975); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 2 (Fireside, NY: 1986); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (W.W. Norton, NY: 1999); Hardy, Haiku (2002); "Midnight" - Leanfrog 4:1 (1981); "Midwinter gloom" - The Heron’s Nest 8:2 (2006); "Bitter cold: thread by thread" - Wind Chimes 2 (1981); "After the snowfall" - van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 2 (Fireside, NY: 1986); Chaba Website; van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (W.W. Norton, NY: 1999); "Among the white bones" - Harr, 70 Sevens (1986); "an owl" - Cicada 2:3 (1978).

Sources Biography: Martha Haldeman; Ce Rosenow, American Haiku Archives Website; sparklers (Kacian ed., Red Moon Press postscripts series volume 3, 2008).