Ikuyo Yoshimura

Born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1944. She graduated from Doshisha University and then received her M.A. from Aichigakuin University. She is an associate professor of English at Asahi University in Gifu. She began writing poetry in college. Her poem "Small Pictures" was first published in 1966. At that time she was interested in the Beat poets of the '60s whose poetry was influenced by Japanese haiku. Haiku is a kind of environmental nature literature that can reflect the real moment of sympathizing between man and nature. To write haiku we must have a keen awareness toward our way of living. R.H.Blyth has told us, "Haiku shows us what we knew all the time, but did not know we knew; it shows us that we are poets in so far as we live at all." She conducted The Writing English Haiku Circle "EVERGREEN" in 1987, which is the first English haiku writing group in Japan. She is the recipient of several haiku awards, including the Aichi Prefecture Prize for Haiku in English, the Special Merit Book Award given by The Australia Day Council, and the Haiku Four Seasons Award given by Newsweek. She lives in Gifu with her family.

Her recent publications include At the Riverside, (1990), Renaissance of the Works of R.H. Blyth, (Matsugaoka Library 1995), Linked Poems by College Students, (ed. Ogaki Women's College 1995), The Life of R.H. Blyth, (Dohosha 1996) and Spring Thunder (Rainbow Press 1996). Cats in Love (Rainbow Press 2000), etc. She has published numerous articles on haiku in English. Her poems often appear in HI (Japan), Simyaku, (Japan), Frogpond (U.S.A.), Haiku Headlines (U.S.A.), Haiku Quarterly
(U.K.), Blithe Spirit (U.K.) and Albatross (Romania).

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