Poet Profile

Barbara Strang

Barbara Strang has lived in Christchurch for many years. Her haiku have been published in periodicals and anthologies, and have appeared in most of the annual anthologies of the New Zealand Poetry Society since1994. She has judged haiku competitions and edited the annual anthology of the NZPS twice. She is a long-time member of the Small White Teapot Haiku Group of Christchurch which organised Haiku Aotearoa, 2008. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University, Wellington.

Awards and Other Honors: First Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (1997); First Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (2003); Co-winner, Kokako Contest (2004); Second Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (2005); Co-winner, Kokako Contest (2005); Second Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (2015). She has been placed in many other competitions, including Highly Commended in the Kathleen Grattan Award 2013, for her unpublished haiku manuscript the oblique moon.

Books Published: Duck Weather (Poets Group, 2006); summer heat chapbook (Puriri Press, 2010).

smoke on the wind
a red dragonfly hovers
near the door

aftershock
the crack
in my biscuit

you speak of divorce
the morning sun
in your face

visiting my ex – 
the dog licks
my face

nor’west arch
the bones 
of a ruined house

children’s voices
the ducks
swim closer

Credits: "smoke on the wind" - still heading out (paper wasp press, Australia, 2013); "you speak of divorce" - Commended, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (1996); The Second New Zealand Haiku Anthology (1998); "nor’west arch" - Second Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (2015); scattered feathers (NZPS, 2015); "aftershock" - Finalist, Touchstone Award for Individual Poems (The Haiku Foundation, 2011); "visiting my ex" - First Place, New Zealand Poetry Society Competition (2003); edge of light: The Red-Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2003 (Red Moon Press, 2004); "children’s voices" - the taste of nashi (Windrift, 2008).