About this Issue’s Guest Haibun Editor: Doris Jean Lynch

Doris Jean Lynch lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with her husband, Thom Gillespie. She’s published her haibun, haiku, and free-verse poems in numerous journals and anthologies, and her books include Swimming to Alaska (Bottom Dog Press, 2023) and Meteor Hound (MediaJazz, 2023). She’s won three Indiana Arts Commission Fellowships and received awards from the Genjuan International Haibun Contest and the Haiku Society of America, among others.

She has a special love for Alaska where she lived for seven years and lately has visited every summer to enjoy old friends, mountain hikes, occasional whale and bear sightings, all which fill her with awe.

She writes:

When I came upon haibun in 2010, I immediately felt the dynamic pull of interweaving poetry and prose. Having written free-verse poems for decades, I’d always found the haiku form nearly impossible to write. Not the shortness of it, but it’s encapsulating a moment as complex and contradictory as life itself. Prose—finding the words and rhythm—comes much easier for me. I love the breadth of haibun subjects: country roads, berry-picking, hiking, kindness to strangers, French hotels, romance, travelogues, and the loss of loved ones. Also, the adventuring, praising, even warnings. Surprise, wonder, anger, longing, and all the other emotions expressed in haiku, those mini-capsules of life. And, in the best haibun, the way the elements snap together, forming a perfect closure: the triad of title, prose, and haiku becoming one.

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