Honorary Curator Ruth Yarrrow
Ruth Yarrow
Honorary Curator, 2015–2016
Appointment Announcement
The American Haiku Archives advisory board is pleased to announce the appointment of Ruth Yarrow as the 2015–2016 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento. This honor recognizes Ruth’s four decades of devotion to haiku poetry and its innate environmental concerns, together with her surefooted work in teaching haiku in classrooms, workshops, and essays. It also honors the example of her poetry, which excels in both domestic and nature-focused subjects. She does not write of idealized nature, but nature as it is.
In an essay on environmental haiku in Frogpond (14:3, 1999), Ruth noted that “the power of haiku in helping us focus on natural beauty is one reason the form attracts so many adherents in this time of environmental crisis. . . . But if we only cling to the unsullied nature we want to see, our haiku can become naively romantic.” Allan Burns, in Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku (Ormskirk, United Kingdom: Snapshot Press, 2013) has described Ruth as being “among the most acclaimed haiku poets of [her] generation.”
We are pleased to celebrate Ruth Yarrow, and to bestow this honor from the American Haiku Archives, which seeks to preserve and promote haiku and related poetry throughout the North American continent.
after the garden party the garden
Ruth Yarrow was born in 1939 in southern New Jersey and grew up in small college towns from North Dakota to Ohio. In the 1950s, a nature study camp she attended in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia led her to choose Antioch College in Ohio for its strong environmental education program. She taught science with the Peace Corps in Ghana, and then earned a Masters degree in ecology from Cornell University.
While on the environmental studies faculty of Stockton State College in New Jersey in the early 70s she taught a course on the natural world seen through world literature. In this class she asked her students to write haiku and got hooked herself. She taught ecology in colleges and environmental centers for many years while volunteering with such organizations as the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.
When their two children fledged, she and her husband Mike moved to the Pacific Northwest where they reveled in mountain backpacking. In Seattle, Ruth worked with Physicians for Social Responsibility for nuclear waste cleanup and with the Fellowship of Reconciliation on peace and justice.
After her husband died in 2014, Ruth moved back to Ithaca, New York to be near her children and grandchildren. Ruth has had more than 650 haiku in the major journals and five books of haiku published. She has given readings and workshops, judged contests, and served as an editor and Haiku Society of America regional coordinator. She says that writing haiku helps her be aware of the richness of life.
warm rain before dawn:
my milk flows into her
unseen
The American Haiku Archives, which includes the Haiku Society of America archives, is the largest public collection of haiku materials outside Japan. Each year since the archives were established on July 12, 1996, the AHA advisory board, currently chaired together by Garry Gay and Randy Brooks, appoints a new honorary curator (an idea suggested by the former California state librarian, Dr. Kevin Starr). Past curators, in order starting from the first year, have been Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Jerry Kilbride, Cor van den Heuvel, Robert Spiess, Lorraine Ellis Harr, Leroy Kanterman, William J. Higginson, Makoto Ueda, Francine Porad, Hiroaki Sato, H. F. Noyes, George Swede, Stephen Addiss, Gary Snyder, Jerry Ball, LeRoy Gorman, Charles Trumbull, and Marlene Mountain. The AHA advisory board is delighted to pay tribute to Ruth Yarrow as the nineteenth honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives.
—Michael Dylan Welch
"View from Rattlesnake"
Books by Ruth Yarrow
No One Sees the Stems, 1981, High/Coo Press
Down Marble Canyon, 1984, Wind Chimes
A Journal for Reflections, 1988, Crossing Press
Sun Gilds the Edge, 1998, Saki Press
Whiff of Cedar, 2007, privately published
Standing Still: Haiku North America Anthology, 2009, edited with Michael Dylan Welch
Lit from Within, 2016, Red Moon Press
Selected Haiku by Ruth Yarrow
snowmelt:
the toddler stirs her reflection
with one mitten
a marmot’s whistle
pierces the mountain
first star
canyon:
at the very edge
riversound
touching the fossil—
low rumblings
of thunder
I step into old growth:
autumn moon deeper
into sky
planting peas
the earth curves under
my fingernails
against the wind
we hold the peace banner—
our spines straighten
food bank line—
a pigeon picks up crumbs
too small to see
crowded bus through fog—
someone singing softly
in another language
riveredge old growth:
a towering window
of stars
moonlit okra leaves
floating in blackness
no one sees the stems
the baby’s pee
pulls roadside dust
into rolling beads
children squealing
slowly the oldest gorilla
focuses elsewhere
minor key
of the Hebrew peace song:
the wind
Web Links
Piercing the Mountain: An Interview with Ruth Yarrow
http://www.graceguts.com/interviews/piercing-the-mountain-an-interview-with-ruth-yarrow
Leading a Nature Walk at the 2014 Seabeck Haiku Getaway in Washington State
https://www.haikuchronicles.com/podcasts/haiku-getaway
Ruth Yarrow on Haiku with Feathers
https://youtu.be/vuVSt6Om2aw
No One Sees the Stems (PDF)
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/files/original/be1c126150492e8f0531d94d55503dac.pdf
Blogging Along Tobacco Road: Ruth Yarrow—Three Questions
http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com/2008/11/ruth-yarrow-three-questions.html
June Jordan and Ruth Yarrow: Poems to Rebuild Kosovo
http://voiceseducation.org/content/june-jordan-and-ruth-yarrow-poems-rebuild-kosovo
“Ruth Yarrow: American Haiku Master” by Mike Dillon
https://sites.google.com/site/haikunorthwest/poems-by-members/ruth-yarrow/ruth-yarrow-american-haiku-master
Ruth Yarrow - Particles on the Wall (video interview)
https://youtu.be/6FEFrhHjJ0E
Ruth Yarrow’s Haiku—Terebess Asia Online
http://terebess.hu/english/usa/yarrow.html
“World Economy in Word Economy” (essay)
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/2011-issue34-1/essay2.html
Brass Bell: Ruth Yarrow
http://brassbellhaiku.blogspot.com/2015/06/brass-bell-ruth-yarrow.html
Millikin University Reader Response Essays
Childhood Through Ruth Yarrow’s Haiku Eyes by Olivia Cuff
Ruth Yarrow’s Haiku by Diana Howell Kupish
Ruth Yarrow’s Haiku by Betsy Quigg