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Two Haiku Poems Published in Leaf

My haiku/senryu poems “The Poet’s Caste” and “Heat Wave” just got published in the online journal Leaf #4 on pages 3 and 42.  The editor is Amanda White.  Keith Evetts commented about “The Poet’s Caste” on page 3. I’m so glad that he liked it!

Here is a link to the new issue: https://leafjournal.io/leaf-issue-four-has-arrived/

“The Poet’s Caste” began as a four-line poem, but I condensed this into a haiku/senryu about five years ago. It refers to the Hindu custom of having a bindi, which is a bright colored dot in the center of the forehead that is worn in the Indian subcontinent (particularly among Hindus in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka) and Southeast Asia among Balinese, Filipino, Javanese, Sundanese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Myanmar Hindus. It represents the opening of the third eye in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Bindu is the point or dot around which the mandala is created, representing the universe.

I had many friends from India when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago, so I learned about Hindu customs from them.

#haiku  #senryu  #poetry   

Nepali woman with a bindi

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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).