a former teacher,
now I wear a Walmart smile--
the chorus
murmuring in my head
you still have your poetry
Gusts, 21, Spring/Summer 2015
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About the Poet
- Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐
- Born in Taipei,Taiwan, Chen-ou Liu was a college teacher, essayist, editor,and two-time winner of the national Best Book Review Radio Program Award.In 2002,he emigrated to Canada and settled in Ajax,a suburb of Toronto. Featured in New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, and listed as one of the top ten haiku poets for 2011(Simply Haiku, 9:3,4, Autumn/Winter 2011),Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Contest). His tanka and haiku have been honored with 170 awards,including First Prize Co-Winner, 7th and 8th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012; Tanka First and Third Places, 2011 San Francisco International Competition; Grand Prix, 2010 Klostar Ivanic Haiku Contest and First Prize Co-Winner, 2010 Haiku International Association Haiku Contest.
Broken/Breaking English: Selected Short Poems
My book is now available through Lulu.This collection of short poems is filled with themes of immigration, learning English, racialized identity, and a poet’s life struggles.
Following the Moon to the Maple Land
My book (First Prize Winner of the Spring 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) is now available through http://www.haikupix.com/ You are one of the most lyric haikuists in our worldwide haiku family. You have the gift of tugging at our hearts. I can see why so many of your haiku have won awards. -- Neal Whitman, renowned American poet
Ripples from a Splash
My book is now available through www.lulu.com [Liu's] haiku resonates the Asian spirit, and makes use of aesthetics in a continuum of time that is permanent and impermanent; the process more important than the subjective specificity of object bias found in most Anglo-Western haiku like poems. His poetry demand to be interpreted by the informed reader. They do not tell all, are not based on an “aha” moment, and have no definitive ending. More importantly they give meaning and voice to the unsaid, the magic inherent in Japanese poetry. -- Poetry Review by Robert D. Wilson, Editor-in-chief of Simply Haiku.
A New Resonance 7
A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts. I'm featured in this anthology and have 15 haiku included in it. This is the seventh volume in a series that has won the Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award in each of its first six appearances.