Poet Profile

Johannes S. H. Bjerg

Haijin, visual artist (mostly drawing these days). Trying to find out what haiku can be in the 21st Century.  I work in English and Danish at the same time in the attempt to break linguistic habits - inherited or self-taught - and because most of the happenings in the world of haiku take place outside Denmark.  Occasional writer of 5-line poetry: tanka, gogyohka/gogyoshi with publication in Atlas Poetica and Take 5.  Haiku have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in the following haiku journals: Presence, Shamrock, Fri Haiku, Prune Juice, Roadrunner, Modern Haiku, Lishanu, Notes from the Gean, A Hundred Gourds, Taj Mahal Review, and in Blade i vinden (Leaves in the Wind) [anthology of Danish Haiku] (Danish Writers Guild - Haiku group / Haiku network, 2011).  I am the initiator and administrator of "monostich" / 1-line ku, a collaborative blog: http://monostich.blogspot.com (English). More of my work may be found at the bilingual website listed above. 

Books Published: Støv (Dust) [in Danish] (2010); Penguins / Pingviner [122 bilingual haiku in English and Danish] (Cyberwit, 2011).

beneath her voice a timbre of something crumbling

western gale a non-seasonal loneliness

silent night -
I swallow the entire future
of an apple tree

kaunsi kanada half the world in darkness

heatwave
a crayon-swan
in Temps Perdu

Pentecost—
the sudden end to
a dandelion's oneness

Credits: "beneath her voice" – Notes from the Gean (Dec. 2011); "silent night" – Notes from the Gean (Dec. 2011); "heatwave" - A Hundred Gourds 1:2 (2012); "western gale" - A Hundred Gourds 1:2 (2012); "kaunsi kanada" - Taj Mahal Review (Dec. 2012); "Pentecost" - Modern Haiku 42:3 (2011).