Poet Profile

Ellen Peckham

Way, way back, when I was young, in the age of specialization, we were taught that the artist should concentrate on one medium: oil, sculpture, pastel, etc. and certainly should not presume to communicate in more than one voice. I remember being fascinated by Van Gogh’s letters, Blake’s prints with his poetry and philosophy and the work of other multi-faceted geniuses. But, listening to my masters, I accounted these flukes beyond the normal range of living mortals, certainly of a female. So when, little by little, I became aware of the duality of expression by artists of both genders, I broke from my cultural limits and began to include and to publish separately my poems and a few essays. Recently poems have appeared in the United States, Japan, Great Britain, Peru, and other countries. I use the two voices alone or layered. Sometimes the words – my own or those which have spoken especially clearly to me – are included in the visual art as subject, as gloss, as decoration. Other times there are poems and visual pieces created together but not produced as one. And occasionally drawings or prints or collages are added to the printed word as small grace notes, related but not included in one work. Two volumes of my haiku and haiga (the art in which the poems appear) are being collected in editions of 7 each. When first asked to give readings, as aside from mounting poems at an exhibit or publishing them, I balked. Now it is a joyful aspect of the total, akin to hanging my work on a wall, and the interaction is exciting and informative. In 2009 I was given a solo show at Instituto Peruano Norteamericano’s new and very modern museum in Lima and read my poems in Spanish and English there and in Ariquipa and Trujillo. A book of the poems in both languages which uses my art as illustration, Recording Loss/Registro de una Pèrdida, was presented at the Feria Internacional de Libros in Lima in August of 2010. To date the book is distributed only in Latin America but looks for a US publisher. I have served on the Boards of two Foundations supporting the arts. I still serve one: a very small family foundation dedicated to the work of mature artists, founded with my late husband many years ago. And, to my great pride, The Harry Ransom Center For The Arts at the University of Texas in Austin is creating an archive of my drafts, published work and art.

Awards and Other Honors: England Forward Press awarded as one of the Top 100 Poets of 2001; The Bay Area Poets for Burning Rubbish, a Rondeau in 2007.

Books Published: Haiga Volume I (AtelierAE, 2010); Haigi Volume II (AtelierAE, 2010); Recording Loss [English] (AtelierAE, 2009); Recording Loss [Spanish dual-language] (Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano--Lima, Peru, 2010); Ticket Stubs (AtelierAE, 2007); Continuing Tradition: Doubly Gifted Artists (AtelierAE, 1999).

earliest 
fireflies brighten
what’s darkest

in New York
Milky Way’s just a
candy bar

backlit by store lights
her shadow cast in puddles –
rain pixilates it

clematis setting 
buds announce our mournful
anniversary

the last white roses
now antique ivory against
the new-fallen snow

sand-clams’ blow-holes dot
the shingle I walk upon
goddess – destroyer

Credits: "earliest" - sharing the sun: Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology 2010 (2010); "backlit by store lights" – Frogpond; "the last white roses" - Asahi Haiku Network (Tokyo, Japan); "in New York" – Frogpond; "clematis setting" – selected to appear in upcoming anthology, The Temple Bell Stops [edited by Robert Epstein]; "sand-clams’ blow-holes dot" - Asahi Haiku Network.