Johnny Baranski has been writing haiku and its related forms since 1975. His work has appeared in the following hard copy and online journals and anthologies: A Hundred Gourds, Brussels Sprout, Bones, bottle rockets, Cattails, Contemporary Haibun Online, Contemporary Haibun Vol. 11, Dragonfly: A Quarterly of Haiku, Frogpond, Haibun Today, Haiku in English The First Hundred years, Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation, Kernels, Mayfly, Modern Haiku, Montage: The Book (The Haiku Foundation), Moonset, Multiverses, No Longer Strangers: Haiku Northwest 25th Anniversary Anthology, Prune Juice, The Heron’s Nest, The Living Haiku Anthology, The Red Moon Press Anthology of English Language Haiku, Under The Basho, and Wind Chimes. Long involved in the anti-war and Catholic Worker movements many of his poems have been written while serving time in prison for acts of nonviolent resistance to militarism and nuclear weapons. A father and grandfather he is currently retired and living in the Pacific Northwest USA. (Mr. Baranski is on Facebook [Johnny Baranski] and Twitter [@haikumonk].)

Awards and Other Honors: Mr. Baranski’s collection Convict’ s Shoot The Breeze was selected as a 2001 Virgil Hutton Memorial Award Haiku Chapbook winner. More recently his poems have received both Sakura Awards and honorable mentions for the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Vancouver (BC) Cherry Blossom Haiku Invitational in the USA category. Along with Margaret Chula he judged The Haiku Society of America’s Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest in 2013. He is editor of The Haiku Foundation’s Per Diem feature on the theme of war and peace for August 2014.

Books Published: Poems From Prison (Sunburst Press, Portland, Oregon 1979); Pencil Flowers: Jail Haiku (Holmgangers Press, Whitethorn, California 1983) [out of print]; Silent Silos: a counterBOMB haiku sequence (sunburst matchbooks, Portland, Oregon 1985); Fish Pond Moon (sunburst matchbooks, Portland, Oregon 1986); Hitch Haiku (sunburst matchbooks, Portland, Oregon 1987); Convicts Shoot The Breeze (Saki Press, Normal, Illinois 2001) [out of print]; just a stone’s throw (Pinch Book Series No. 12 edited by Vincent Tripi, Tribe Press, Greenfield, Massachusetts 2006). Trifolds: First Snow (Teahouse Pamphlets, Portland, Oregon 2003); Autumn Leaves, Selected Poems Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2012; Paper Cranes, Selected Haiku for HNA 2013; Beads of Glass, A Rosary Haiku Sequence, Seabeck Haiku Getaway 2013. Broadside: Blossoming Pear (Lilliput Review #191, edited by Don Wentworth, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania 2013). He has a new haiku manuscript, Fireweed, that has recently been accepted for publication by Folded Word Press.