Mary Stevens has been a member of the Haiku Society of America since 2003, and after several years of study, has been published regularly in the major journals since 2009. She began her study with Traditional Japanese Poetry by Steven D. Carter, Seeds from a Birch Tree by Clark Strand, and by examining and breaking down structurally the haiku she was reading in Frogpond and Modern Haiku. For beginners, she also recommends Haiku: A Poet’s Guide by Lee Gurga, The Wonder Code by Scott Mason, and Where the River Goes by Alan Burns.

Mary’s other passion is dance, in particular Authentic Movement, and she has been meeting weekly with a community of women for this embodied expressive movement practice since 2008. Connecting intimately with the physical-spiritual self is another way she finds the meaning, beauty, and getting down to the essence of thing that she loves so much about Nature and reading and writing haiku.

Fascinated by the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi, she presented “The Cicada’s Voice: How Wabi-Sabi Can Teach Us How to Live” at Haiku North America 2015 in Schenectady, NY. Here she shows that loss can help us develop humility, respect, vulnerability, acceptance, gratitude, and wonder. In 2013 she co-judged with John Stevenson the Nicholas Virgilio Haiku Contest. In 2020 she won first place in the Harold G. Henderson Haiku Awards and second place in the Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards.

Mary lives in the Hudson Valley, among much wildlife, and is a lecturer and coordinator at SUNY, New Paltz, holding master’s degrees in Spanish and English.

She is grateful for the opportunity to share her poems with lovers of haiku this month.