Frameless Sky 18 published my senryu poem "Black Sheep" online in late June, 2023. This is a special issue on the theme of family. The guest editor is Vandana Parashar. Senryu differ from haiku because senryu poems are about people, while haiku poems focus on nature. But both types of poems have the same structure. #family #poetry #literaryjournal #senryu Janet Ruth Heller reading her poems at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra
The scholarly journal MidAmerica just published Margaret Rozga's review of my poetry book Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021). Margaret Rozga is a professor emeritus of the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. MidAmerica focuses on literature of the Midwest, and the editor is Marcia Noe, who teaches liberal arts, international studies, and women's studies courses for the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. Here are Professor Rozga's comments about my poems in Nature's Olympics. Wisconsin-born and University of Chicago-educated Janet Ruth Heller finds inspiration for her poems in the upper Midwest, especially the states that border Lake Michigan. The more distant settings featured in these poems include Arizona and Mississippi, but the travel in this volume most often takes place from Midwestern cities to Midwestern woodlands, rivers, and lakes. The western shore of Lake Michigan provided Heller her early geographic orientation, as the largely autobiographical poem, “Growing Up on the Other Side of Lake Michigan, an Ode,” makes clear. She moved to the east side of the lake for her career as a literature professor at several Michigan universities. She is a past president of The Society…