Published Senryu Poem and Interview in Grand Rapids Magazine

Recently, I published a poem and got interviewed by Ann Byle for Grand Rapids Magazine.

Editor Kelly Moyer published my senryu “Quilting” in failed haiku 9, #108 (February 2025) on page 152. The link is https://failedhaiku.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/failedhaikuissue108-final-1.pdf  The title of this journal is a joke: failed haiku publishes only senryu poems, not haiku, unlike most micropoetry journals.

Ann Byle interviewed four Southwest Michigan writers who publish religious poems in for her article “Inspiring Beliefs: Writers Share Journeys to Faith-Infused Poetry” that appeared in Grand Rapids Magazine in the March/April 2025 issue on pages 19 to 21. Byle quotes part of my poem “Sarah’s Prayer” from my book Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014) in her essay. Other writers included in this article are Jeff Munroe, Jane Zwart, and Katie Kalisz.

#senryu #interview #jewishpoetry #religiouspoetry #quilting

Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Darrin Goodman

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).