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Poems by Janet Ruth Heller recently published in december, Prune Juice, and Blithe Spirit

I am happy to report that december magazine just published six of my haiku and senryu poems: “Swimming in the Rain,” “Flames Flicker,” “Raindrops,” “Yellow Quilt,” “Stocking Cap,” and “Wild Pea Flowers.” december 36.1 (Spring/Summer, 2025) on page 88. I wrote “Flames Flicker” in 1999 and revised it, so I am very happy to have found such a good home for this tiny poem after waiting 25 years. I wrote “Swimming in the Rain” in 2010, and I’m also delighted to have this poem in print. It concerns swimming in Elkhart Lake during one of our family reunions. The managing editor of december is Jennifer Goldring.

Also, my senryu poem “Exit” is in the current issue of Prune Juice No. 46 (August 2025) on page 8. https://prunejuicesenryu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/prune-juice-issue-46-c2a9-2025.pdf  The editors are Antoinette Cheung and P. H. Fischer.

Finally, editor Iliyana Stoyanova published my two haiku “Deer Tracks” and “Flash of Red” in Blithe Spirit 35.3 (August 2025) on page 59. This journal is based in England.  This is the special thirty-fifth anniversary issue of Blithe Spirit.

#haiku #senryu #naturepoetry

Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Darren Goodman

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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).