Biography

Lorin Ford writes haiku and longer poems from her tumbling-down C19 worker's cottage home in Brunswick, Victoria [Australia]. Much of Lorin's early childhood was spent on the foreshore and beach of a Melbourne bay-side suburb. From age nine she lived with her father, who ran the pub in a small East Gippsland timber town. She left school early, at fourteen, preferring a 'glamorous' career in hairdressing to her year 9 correspondence lessons. Later, she received an Honours degree in English Literature and a Dip. Ed. and subsequently taught high school English and ESL. She has remained an eternal student, enjoying her discovery of new aspects of the world, and of poetry, especially.

Lorin's haiku have been widely published in Australian and overseas journals and anthologies. Though she has not entered international haiku competitions, she was awarded 1st prize in the 6th and 7th paper wasp Jack Stamm awards, in 2005 and 2006.

Her first haiku collection, a wattle seedpod, was awarded first place in the Haiku Society of America Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit Book Awards, 2009. It is available through the publishers, PostPressed, at http://www.postpressed.com.au/ or alternatively contact Lorin herself.
______________________

Biography

Kirsty Karkow was born in England, grew up in the British West Indies and Arizona, but now lives on the coast of Maine. She has won prizes and awards for her English-language haiku and tanka poetry with world-wide publication in various journals and magazines. She was lately VP of the Tanka Society of America, has been tanka editor for several journals, and is the author of two books, in print, published by Black Cat Press. These are water poems: haiku, tanka and sijo and shorelines: haiku, haibun and tanka.





______________________

Biography

H. Gene Murtha, a naturalist and poet, was born on October 19, 1955 under the sign of Libra in Philadelphia, Pa. He has won or placed high in a number of haikai contests around the world.

Gene sponsored and judged the first haiku contest for the inner city children of Camden, NJ., for the Virgilio Group, of which he is an lifetime member. With renku partners Bill (Wm. J.) Higginson and Paul MacNeil, he is co-inventor of the single-words shisan renku entitled, Cobweb. His memberships include the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, Mad Poets Society, The Haiku Society of America, Tanka Society of America, HaikuOz and the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association.

Gene's recent awards and publications include: Tanka Splendor Award 2008, Contemporary Haibun 10: Red Moon Press, A New Resonance 6: Red Moon Press, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, 2008 Anthology, Published by Modern English Tanka Press and various print and online journals around the world.
______________________

Biography

Melinda Hipple is an award-winning artist, photographer and writer. A native of Missouri [USA], her father was an amateur painter and her mother an avid reader with a true love for poetry and music. These early influences drove Melinda to look for creative connections and venues in every community she lived. Five decades and five states later, she has settled into a vibrant town in Kansas, teaching art and photography classes and honing her writing skills.

Among her many works are two science fiction novels, a mystery novella and several poetry collections including three books of haiku.

Melinda's B.A. studies in fine art were interrupted by a 34-year marriage. She hopes to get back to class soon. Meanwhile, she cycles through the creative areas of writing, drawing, painting, belly dancing and just observing human nature and the natural world in juxtaposition. She was a past editor and columnist for Up the Creek News and her published works include haiku, senryu, tanka and haiga.
______________________

Biography

Ray Rasmussen lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In an earlier life he was a university professor but now has moved on to shoveling snow and feeding and walking two enthusiastic dogs. In his spare time, he plays at photography, writing and wilderness hiking adventures in Willmore Wilderness Park and Utah's Canyon Country. Ray's introduction to haiku was indirect. He photographed and then did a photography website on the Kurimoto Japanese Garden in Edmonton. He wanted to include some Asian poetry with the images. The Internet led him to haiku and to the vast Internet sites related to haiku poets and haiku-genre journals. His next excursion into the haiku world was to create contemporary haiga (photo haiku, digital art haiku) using haiku by the masters and by well-known haiku poets. He then went on a journey of trying to write his own haiku, suffering all the usual feelings of inadequacy and discovering that the world's shortest poem is perhaps the most difficult to compose. Because he liked the expansiveness of the haibun form, he settled on it as his mode of expression with other intelligent beings (his dogs nod off when he reads his haibun aloud whereas his friends merely nod and try to look interested).

Ray co-founded Contemporary Haibun Online with Ken Jones, Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross as content editors while he served as webmaster. He also designed the Simply Haiku website, was haiga editor and webmaster for 2 years. He has more than 100 haibun, haiku, haiga and articles published in the various haiku genre journals. For reasons unknown even to himself, Ray maintains his own haiku website with examples of his haibun and which permit readers to nod off without hurting his feelings.
______________________

Biography

Grum F. Robertson was born in 1965, in Aberdeen, Scotland. From the age of 17 to 20 he worked for an engineering company as a metal failure analyst where he developed a passion for photography.

Grum studied a B.A. in Photographic Arts at Edinburgh. In his final year, Grum, produced and directed a short film, called Billy Tattoo, based in and around a tattoo artist's shop in Leith. Billy Tattoo was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and subsequently the Piccadilly Film Festival – where it was the only short film – screened alongside Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

Grum has worked as a freelance photographer for the Scotland on Sunday newspaper and an assistant for MTV Europe. He has worked on the short films: Wheels, 1992 – shot in Nairn and set in the 1970s; Quality of Life, 2004 – screened at the Berlin Film Festival and Apocalypse Oz, 2006 – shot in and around L.A. and screened at the Sundance Film Festival; and various other independent Scottish television productions.
______________________

Biography

Colin Stewart Jones lives and writes in Aberdeen, Scotland. He studied Gaelic language and literature at the University of Aberdeen. His final dissertation for his MA was on points of contact between Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean and the Danish philosopher S๘ren Kierkegaard. Colin went on to study an MLitt in Irish and Scottish Studies under Professor Tom Devine at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies.

Colin first started writing haiku in 2005 when he realised that it was not just about counting syllables. He has had some success with publishing haiku, tanka, haiga, renku and haibun; appearing in many online and print journals. His work has been anthologised in white lies: The Red Moon Anthology of English Language Haiku 2008, contemporary haibun Vol 10 and he placed joint first in the 2008 Haiku Poets of Northern California International Rengay Competition. Colin has also been experimenting with one-word haiga which were published by The World Haiku Review. In a recent review of Colin's book A Seal Snorts out the Moon, Published by Cauliay, Robert Wilson, managing editor of Simply Haiku, described his writing as a cross between Bukowski and Kerouac. Colin, however, still feels his education is ongoing and is privileged to be able to learn from his peers.

Samples of Colin's published work can be read at: http://serendipiku.com/
______________________