Poet Profile

Stella Pierides

Stella Pierides is a British poet and artist of Greek descent. Interweaving the past with the present, her work highlights the cultural, social, and psychological layers of our lives. Her work has been translated into several languages and anthologized. Poems appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Blithe Spirit, Bones, Califragile, Chrysanthemum, Coast, Contemporary Haibun Online, Frogpond, Haibun Today, Hedgerow, KYSO Flash, Modern Haiku, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Presence, Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. Four of her felting haiga appeared in the debut issue of MacQueen’s Quinterly.
Her work for The Haiku Foundation includes managing Per Diem: Daily Haiku/World of Haiku (2012-2018), serving as founding managing editor for Haikupedia (2019-2020), conceiving and coordinating the year-long feature Haiku for Parkinson’s (2024), and serving on the Board of Directors (2014-2024).
She enjoys reading, writing, feltmaking, walking, gardening, film, music, and food.

Awards and Other Honors:

Stella has received two Haiku Society of America Merit Book awards for her books Of This World (Red Moon Press, 2017 - 48 haibun) and In the Garden of Absence (Fruit Dove Press, 2012 - haiku). She was Featured Writer in Contemporary Haibun Online (20.2) 2024. Honorable Mention in the Mt. Fuji Tanka Grand Prix contest 2018, First prize in the contest Sharpening the Green Pencil, 2017. Her poems have been included in A New Resonance 10: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2017) and in the Red Moon Anthology Dust Devils (2017); included in Haiku 2014 (Modern Haiku Press); included in the European Top 100 most creative haiku authors for six consecutive years (2012-2017) and in 2021; honorable mention, Haiku Invitational, International Sakura Awards 2015; third Prize in the 19th International Kusamakura Haiku Competition, 2014; included in With Cherries on Top: 31 Flavors of NaHaiWriMo, 2012; runner-up The Haiku Calendar competition 2012 (Snapshot Press); included in the Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 4; work selected for the Capoliveri Anthology (2011); honorable mention, 15th Mainichi Contest (2011).

Books Published:

Books include: Of This World (48 haibun; Red Moon Press, 2017); In the Garden of Absence (haiku and micropoetry; Fruit Dove Press, 2012); Feeding the Doves (short stories / haibun; Fruit Dove Press, 2013) and Even Paranoids Have Enemies: New Perspectives on Paranoia and Persecution, by J. H. Berke, et al. (eds.), (Routledge, 1998).
Articles include: Pierides, S. “Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku.” In Juxtapositions: A Journal of Research and Scholarship in Haiku, issue 8, 2022; Pierides, S., et al. “Knocking on the Doors of Perception.” In Juxtapositions: A Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship, 5(1), 2019; Pierides, S., et al. “Haiku and the brain: an exploratory study.” Juxtapositions: A Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship, 3(1), 2017; Müller, H., et al. “Reading English-language haiku: Processes of meaning construction revealed by eye movements.” Journal of Eye Movement Research, 10(1), 2017; Geyer, T., et al. “Reading haiku: What eye movements reveal about the construction of literary meaning - an exploratory study.” In T. Lachmann & T. Weis (eds.), New Stages in Human Information Processing Research: In Search of Invariants in Cognition. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2017.

steam room―
letting go of 
my bones

typos
in the book of the dead―
water lilies

the last page missing
from the library book―
late autumn evening

noon heat
a hairline crack
in the angel’s wing

wild stream
my thoughts
etc.

poems in waiting
the years I lost for fear
of chrysanthemums

evening fog
the holes in the subtext
disappear

way below
the chestnut’s inner skin
a white sail

Credits:

“steam room” – Blithe Spirit vol. 27 No. 1 (2017); “typos” – Right Hand Pointing issue 95 (2016); "the last page missing" - Frogpond vol. 41.2 Spring/Summer (2018); “noon heat” – from haibun “Absences”, in Unbroken Journal Issue 20 (2019); “wild stream” – The 19th Kusamakura Haiku Competition, Third Prize (2014); “poems in waiting” – Issa’s Untidy Hut, May 9, 2013); “evening fog" – Bones 18, (2019); “way below” – from haibun “The Vase”, in Of This World (Red Moon Press, 2017).