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Haiku Poem published by Blithe Spirit

I published one haiku in May. My haiku “Clouds and Ribs,” which is about a sunset, appeared in Blithe Spirit 34.2 (May 2024) on page 29. Blithe Spirit is the journal of the British Haiku Society, and Iliyana Stoyanova, who is great to work with, edits the publication. I wrote “Clouds and Ribs” decades ago and revised the poem. I was pleased to finally see it in print.

I advise other writers never to give up: keep revising and sending out work until you find an editor who accepts your prose or poetry. One of my poems that I wrote in 1978 got published in 2018–that is forty years of sending it out and getting rejection notes.

#haiku #poetry #revision

Janet Ruth Heller speaking at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra
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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).