The journal Bear Creek Haiku has published four of my haiku in its August 2020 issue. The editor is Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, assisted by people and two cats. I have been revising many of my haiku to shorten them, and I'm pleased that these four have found a good home. Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Diane Joy Schmidt
My poem “January Blizzard” was recently printed in Poetry Leaves: Adult Contemporary Anthology, edited by Emily Kazmierczak and published by the Waterford Township Public Library, 2020, on page 75. Poetry Leaves submissions come from all over the world. There was going to be an exhibit of all of the poems at the library in Waterford, Michigan from May 20 to June 3, 2020, but that got canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic. I had been trying to get "January Blizzard" published since February 1979. I wrote it after about two feet of snow fell on Chicago, where I was living and teaching at the time. The city administration had trouble dealing with all of the snow, and the resulting mess helped Jane Byrne to get elected mayor, the first woman to hold this position. Attachment Preview Janet Ruth Heller reading her poems at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra