old firelit hands
sew a bright scrap
to the faded quilt
Joe Nutt was born in September, 1935, in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in small towns and on farms in northern Ohio, western Virginia and central Florida. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in English, he moved to Connecticut where he worked in social services and as an editor of technical and trade publications. He aearned an M.S. in education from the University of Bridgeport. He then moved to South Florida where he lived in Coral Springs and Fort Lauderdale and worked primarily as an editor-writer-photographer for weekly newspapers. After over thirteen years in Florida, he moved back to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where he continued to pursue his long-standing interests in writing haiku and historical essays and drawing in pen and ink. In June of 1989 a book collection of his haiku and senryu, Kernels, was self published and covers the years 1968-1989. (Joe passed away at age 80 in May 2016 in Stuart, Florida. I am sharing haiku from his book to celebrate his life and his love of haiku.- Tom Clausen- the biographical information was taken from ‘Kernels’ )