About Jon Petruschke

My first collection of dream haiku is now available on Amazon. Many of my best haiku from Basho and Jung are included, and many new ones that you’ve never read before. Here is a link: http://amzn.to/M71m9E  Thank you to all of you who have been reading and enjoying my haiku. There are many more to come!

I’ve always felt drawn to haiku — tiny poems tending to be three lines of seventeen syllables (sometimes longer or, impressively, shorter).  Just long enough to hold a surprise for the reader.  I find that even a few minutes a day writing these bite-sized poems will cleanse my palate of the hefty, chapters of my past.

You see, during the last few years, on almost a daily basis, I’ve been chipping away at writing my first book.  It’s a piece that, when finally finished, will land somewhere between the genres of creative non-fiction and memoir.  This project’s required a great deal of the prose-producing part of me.  So, perhaps in an effort to maintain a well-balanced writing mind, I decided to experiment with writing haiku when I first wake in the morning – and to base them on the bizarre, alternate reality of my dreams.  I’ve been capturing the memories of the mini, nightly vacations I take.

I have had short fiction published in the collections Philly Fiction and Philly Fiction 2.  And my poetry has appeared in a variety of journals including Poetic Hours; Paper Wasp; Children, Churches and Daddies; 3 Cup Morning; Open Minds Quarterly; Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream and the anthology In Our Own Words: Generation X Poetry.

I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs.  And for the last ten years, I’ve resided in Portland, Maine, with my wife and two cats.  Shortly after relocating to Portland, I founded an intimate and tight-knit writing group that I continue to lead today.

When not writing, I work as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, leading a team of case managers who assist adults with severe and persistent mental illness.

I would love to read your haiku.  Dream ones and otherwise.  Please feel free to post some in a comment.

The four header photographs are courtesy of Mike Coll.