Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry
| Current Issue | Archives | About Simply Haiku | Submissions | Search |

Alan Pizzarelli, EditorSenryu
[ email ]

© 2006 An Xiao

Alan Pizzarelli was born in 1950 of an Italian-American family in Newark, New Jersey. Raised in the first ward’s Little Italy, he was noted for his many artistic talents. By the age of 14, he formed his own band and performed as lead singer, bass guitarist and song writer.

In the late 1960s, he befriended the poet/punster Louis Ginsberg (father of Allen Ginsberg) who taught him the fundamentals of writing poetry. In the early 1970s, he studied haiku and related forms under the tutelage of Professor Harold G. Henderson, author of An Introduction to Haiku (Doubleday) and Haiku in English (Charles Tuttle).

Since then, Pizzarelli’s astonishing output of authentic English language haiku and senryu have received world wide acclaim and popularity. He has been much publicized as a pioneer of English-language senryu and a leading literary spokesmen for the American haiku and senryu movement.

Pizzarelli has published 12 collections of his haiku and senryu including The Flea Circus (Islet Books, 1989), City Beat (Islet Books, 1991), which won the Merit Book Award’s first place in 1992, Senryu Magazine (River Willow, 2001), The Windswept Corner (Bottle Rockets Press, 2005).

His work has been widely anthologized in many major publications, including in each of the three editions of The Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel (1974, 1986, 1999), the third edition including 43 of his haiku and senryu.

He was also a consultant for Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus (Penguin Poets, 2003) edited by Regina Weinreich.

He is currently in the process of editing the first major English-language Senryu Anthology.

Additional information about Alan can be found by entering his name on world wide websites.


Copyright 2009: Simply Haiku