About

Dear Friends, Colleagues, Nomads, and Outsiders:

Word pond is a curatorial content blog I build as one would a nest for wings and claws to take hold — on the intermediacies of eco-, geo-, and biopoetics, the weather, permaculture, photography, music, alternative media, visual arts, and poetry (Japanese-derived and open forms), for which I have either written short essays and poems or curated media to share.

I set out on this journey in March 2010. The calendar didn’t say Spring, but the cold rain in the rootstocks and legions of robins knew otherwise. That March day, I had brought home my recitations and readings of Chaucer, the late Jane Reichhold’s “Basho The Complete Haiku” (Kodansha: Tokyo, 2008) and, French philosopher and semiologist, Roland Barthes’s “A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments” (Hill and Wang: NY, 1977, translated from the French by Richard Howard). To set out on a pilgrimage in the dark, cold rain is near to Barthes’s figuration: “To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.”

It is an exciting time to create in this way and is little different from what Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his preface to the 1851 edition of his Twice-Told Tales — that he was writing as a way to “open an intercourse with the world.”  So I begin mine.

Yours truly,
Donna Fleischer
March 2010
(revised for past tense 11.10.13; updated January 14, 2021)

A Shorter Bio > for a short bio & recent poems hover over the word ‘About’ at the top right until it turns red  &  Surprise ! <

Donna Fleischer’s free verse, traditional and experimental haiku and haibun and poems of ekphrasis appear in anthologies and journals worldwide: A) Glimpse) Of), A Hundred Gourds, A Vast Sky, Aerie, Annandale Dream Gazette, Artis, Asahi Shimbun, Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, Back Room Live!, Beyond the Grave, Blo͞o Outlier Poetry Journal, Bones, bottle rockets, Brass Bell, cattails, Circumference, Contemporary Haibun Volumes 4 and 15, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cornell University Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, Dispatches From the Poetry Wars, Dreams Wander On, EOAGH, esque, Exit Strata, Fiera Lingue, Frogpond, Haiku 2014, Haiku 2015, Hummingbird, is/let, Journal of Renga & Renku volume 3, Kō, Lilliput Review, Mainichi Daily News, MayDay Magazine, Modern Haiku, moongarlic, Naugatuck River Review, #Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, On Barcelona, Otata, Otoliths, Peace Is a Haiku Song, Poetry Pea, Poets for Living Waters, Presence, roadrunner, Salamander Cove, Solitary Plover, South by Southeast, Spiral Orb, Stonewall’s Legacy, The End of the World Project, The Fortnightly Review, The Marsh Hawk Press Review, The Operating System, tinywords, TRUCK, Under the Bashō, Verse Osmosis, Wang Ping’s Kinship of Rivers, Wales Haiku Journal, We Are All Japan Anthology, Woven, and Zen Space. < Periodic Earth > (Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, Pueblo, CO, 2016), is her fourth chapbook. Other chapbooks are with Meritage Press (2020), Longhouse Publishers (2011) and bottle rockets press (2003). Fleischer’s earliest poems, for which she received the University of Hartford 1987 Creative Writing Award for Poetry, Virginia Hale, Ph.D. and George Michael Evica, Ph.D., judges, are collected in the self-produced, Intimate Boundaries (1991 – available from the poet).

Of Recent Note

FLANEUR, a collection of 25 haibun with pictures by the poet, Donna Fleischer, Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, Green River, Vermont, 2024 

Every Day Earth, a collection of 40 haiku by Donna Fleischer, Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, Green River, Vermont, 2024 

Donna Fleischer Reads for the EDGE Poetry Reading Series at Fable (with Vimeo) at don yorty explorations, 2023

EDGE Reading Series #96, featured the poets Donna Fleischer, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura, and Debra Kuhn reading at FABLE, Southington, CT, on March 31, 2023. The EDGE is “an interdisciplinary reading & performance series emphasizing diversity of narrative & identity and hybridity,” according to the poet and curator Melissa Buckheit, who founded EDGE in 2008 at Casa Libre in Tucson, AZ and brought it East in 2022, with pop-ups in Boston and Providence and continuing at FABLE, Southington, CT.

“RGBY Photographic Colour Theory, Pictures, Poems and Birds Who Sing” by Ellen Carey
and Donna Fleischer, Unlikely Journal Project Space, University of Sydney, Australia, Issue 8, 2023.

Wind-Mountain-Oak:Poems of Sappho (Tupelo Press, 2023), Dan Beachy-Quick Translation, Donna Fleischer Review.

Rapture in Oneiric Blue, a hybrid prose poem essay of ekphrasis on the photo  – light – art of artist Ellen Carey by poet Donna Fleischer. Ellen Carey is an American artist known for conceptual photography exploring non-traditional approaches to light involving process, exposure, and paper that overturn the photograph’s conventional status as an iconic “sign” or reproduction of a physical object. (Wikipedia, ellencareyphotography.com)

Meritage Press (San Francisco, April 2020) has released from beyond my window: the Covid-19 poems  — short poems by Donna Fleischer, in a miniature, cloth-bound chapbook handmade by Eileen R. Tabios, editor, publisher, poet, and writer.

Donna Fleischer is a member of the Boiler House Poets Collective (BHPC), an outgrowth of a poetry residency collaboration between MASS MoCA and Tupelo Press  in North Adams, Massachusetts. The BHPC anthology, Verse Osmosis, edited by Ann Dernier, as well as a Vimeo video by poet Marilyn McCabe, of the Boiler House Poetry Reading at Mass MoCA are but two outcomes of this ongoing collective.

Noise & Silence, the blogspot of poet and author, Christien Gholson, features Donna Fleischer’s poetry.

Realities & the Rituals of the Upside Down by A) Glimpse) Of) Press, January 2019, Athens, Dimitra Ioannou, editor); print edition of 80pp available at A) Glimpse) Of). Dimitra Ioannou, poet, writer, editor, and publisher, states:  The word “zophos” means “darkness; obscurity; melancholia; the dark side of the horizon.” A very strong Greek word to describe social malaise. Now, whether we live in Athens, Boston, Bucharest, or Glasgow, we share similar conditions and needs. How are we equipping ourselves for reality? Where do we imagine ourselves less vulnerable? How will we shape new ground upon which we can imagine and thrive? How will we claim space for tenderness, empathy, awareness, humor and beauty? For the Realities and the Rituals of the Upside Down issue, we invited 27 international poets, artists, & a scientist to reflect on today’s realities. Realities and the Rituals of the Upside Down features:

• poetry by Jay Besemer, Theodoros Chiotis, Maria Damon, Helen Dimos, Universal Jenny, Donna Fleischer, Clive Gresswell, Ray McKenzie, C. Kubasta, Iulia Militaru, John Morgan, Alice Notley, Christina Ntanovasili,
Nat Raha, Sandra Simonds, Tom Snarsky, and Alan Sondheim;
• artworks by Antonis Donef, Lito Kattou and Anna Lascari;
• a conversation with the poet CAConrad;
• critical ideas by the environmental scientist Giorgos Kallis;
• Narratives in Progress by Amy McCauley (on consolatory art), by Eva Moreda (on translation) and Rebecca       Wilcox (on affective sound); and
• columns by Louisa Doloksa (on literature and bowels), Kyriaki Goni (on urban rituals) and D.I. (Hot Athens).

You may purchase Realities and the Rituals of the Upside Down at Perdu in Amsterdam, Good Press Gallery in Glasgow, Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop and Grolier poetry bookstore in NYC, and Little Tree Bookshop & Coffee in Athens. There is one copy available on the shelves of the National Poetry Library in London, and another one at Aeromoto, a non-for-profit library specialized in artist books, independent publishing, and contemporary culture in Mexico City.

The End of the World Project, in two volumes, edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman, Richard Lopez, and T.C. Marshall (published by Moria Books, Indiana, 2019, William Allegrezza, editor) on the theme of how does one write in the face of the unspeakable, of ongoing ecocide. . . .  If you navigate to the bottom of the Moria Books page at this link you may download or purchase the books — Moria Poetry Press. Eileen R. Tabios, poet, writer, and editor, compiled the following listing of the writers who contributed to this project:

Etel Adnan
Charles Alexander
Will Alexander
Will Alexander and Byron Baker
Rae Armantrout
John Armstrong
DJ Kirsten Angel Dust
Runa Bandyopadhyay
Alan Baker
Carlyle Baker
Tom Beckett
Melissa Benham
Franco Beltrametti
Steve Benson
Charles Bernstein
Anselm Berrigan
John Bloomberg-Rissman
Daniel Borzutzky
Daniel f Bradley
Helen Bridwell
Julian Talamantez Brolaski
Brandon Brown
David Buuck
Wendy Burk
Olivier Cadiot
Julie Carr / Lisa Olstein
Aileen Cassinetto and C. Sophia Ibardaloza
Tom Cohen
Claire Colebrook
Allison Cobb
Jon Cone
CA Conrad
Stephen Cope
Eduardo M. Corvera II (E.M.C. II)
Brenda Coultas
Anne Laure Coxam
Michael Cross
Thomas Rain Crowe
Brent Cunningham
Jane Dalrymple-Hollo
Philip Davenport
Michelle Detorie
John DeWitt
Diane Di Prima
Suzanne Doppelt
Paul Dresman
Aja Couchois Duncan
Camille Dungy
Marcella Durand
Martin Edmond
Sarah Tuss Efrik and Johannes Göransson
Tongo Eisen-Martin
Clayton Eshleman
Carrie Etter
Steven Farmer
Alec Finlay
Donna Fleischer
Evelyn Flores
Diane Gage
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Forrest Gander
Renée Gauthier
Crane Giamo
Giant Ibis
Alex Gildzen
Samantha Giles
C. S. Giscombe
Peter Gizzi
Anne Gorrick
Richard Greenfield
Jaimie Gusman
Drum Hadley
Rob Halpern
Roberto Harrison
j/j hastain
Jonathan Hayes
Kris Hemensley
Anselm Hollo
Fanny Howe
Angela Hume
Stefan Hyner
Tim Ingold
Hiromi Itō
Adeline Johns-Putra
Pierre Joris
Tim Kahl
Jennifer Karmin and Bernadette Mayer
Lynn Keller
Klipschutz
Márton Koppány
José Kozer
Abdellatif Laâbi
Sonnet L’Abbe
Janice Lee
Ágnes Lehóczky
Richard Lopez
Chip Lord
Rupert M Loydell
Eric Magrane
Peter Manson
Colin Lee Marshall
T.C. Marshall
Lila Matsumoto
James Maughn
Rachel May
Bernadette Mayer
Cris Mazza
Jim McCrary
Bill McKibben / Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna
Scott McVay
Brigid Meier
Miranda Mellis
nick-e Melville
Billy Mills
Gustave Morin
Rusty Morrison
Charlie Morrow
Eileen Myles
Heather Nagami
Sawako Nakayasu
Camilla Nelson
Paul Nelson
Ron Padgett
Shin Yu Pai
Lars Palm
Michael Palmer
Stephen Parlato
Dale Pendell
M. NourbeSe Philip
Tiare Picard
Deborah Poe
Stephen Ratcliffe
Marthe Reed
Evelyn Reilly
Noʻu Revilla
Robert Rissman
Ed Roberson
Kim Stanley Robinson / Donald Wesling
Kit Robinson
David Rothenberg / Michael Deal
Jerome Rothenberg
Douglas Rothschild
Hassen Saker
Andrew Schelling
Jared Schickling
Susan M. Schultz
Jesús Sepúlveda
Eric Paul Shaffer
James Sherry
Eleni Sikelianos
Sandra Simonds
Andrew Mark Sivak
pete spence
Christine Stewart
Leny Strobel
Cole Swensen
Eileen R. Tabios
Guy Taylor
Mel C. Thompson
TC Tolbert
Edwin Torres
Rodrigo Toscano
Jean Vengua
Pasquale Verdicchio
Cecilia Vicuña
Alli Warren
Karen Weiser
Julia Wieting
Amie Whittemore
Tyrone Williams
Elizabeth Willis
Elisabeth Workman
Workman-Brandt Household
Mark Young

Stonewall’s Legacy, a poetry anthology, “aims to serve as a poetic record of where LGBT+ people were, are, and will be as a global community.” – Lambda Literary. Prior to its June, 2019 publication date, Stonewall’s Legacy is available for pre-order from Local Gems Press, Long Island, NY, at Local Gems Press. Rusty Rose and Marc Rosen co-edited this anthology. It includes poems by Ellen Bass, Guillermo Filice Castro, Alfred Corn, Donna Fleischer, Sean Hanrahan, Timothy Liu, Richard Loranger, Savana Mazumder, and Lynn McGee.

In the House of the Hangman – Volume 3, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Laughing/Ouch/Cube /Publications, 2016, p.1613 appropriation from Donna Fleischer, in Bloomberg-Rissman’s own words on his In the House of the Hangman: “A marathon dance mix consisting of thousands of mashed up text and image samples, In the House of the Hangman tries to give a taste of what life is like there, where it is impolite to speak of the noose. It is the third part of the life project Zeitgeist Spam . . . . In the House of the Hangman – Volume 3

Three Reviews ~

Lee Gurga, the renowned poet and editor, wrote this of a haiku by Donna Fleischer:

” . . . I’d like to close with a haiku that is one of the most interesting in Haiku 2015. Here is, one line at a time:

dried up

earthworm ouro-

boros condom

Fascinating, isn’t it? I would probably have stopped here, with its images of nature
(dried up earthworm), mythology (ouroboros), and contemporary life (condom), and thought I had a great haiku. And it is. But the poet went beyond this, into another realm. The haiku finishes with a whiz-bang fourth line that, as you will see, literally closes the circle and engages directly with the Japanese tradition:

dried up
earthworm ouro-
boros condom
ensō

– Donna Fleischer

Haiku such as these are, I believe, contemporary English-language haiku at its best.”

– Lee Gurga

(Conference Presentation Paper by Lee Gurga at Boston University’s Center for Asian Studies, published in the journal International Japanese Literature Research Meeting Proceedings Issue 39 pp157 – 176, Issued 2016-03-17 by the National Literature Research Center ISSN ISSN 0387-7280. Format pdf. archived at the National Institute of Japanese Literature Repository and Boston University)
[Lee, Gurga. “シンポジウム Japanese Haiku and Contemporary English-Language Haiku.” In 国際日本文学研究集会会議録, no. 39, pp. 157-176. 2016.]

Poet and author Marilyn Johnston reviews < Periodic Earth > at Galatea Resurrects 2018
(Eileen Tabios, editor): “The heart’s concrete language has triumphed, also. That’s how this book draws the reader in and does not let her go until the last word is spoken. That’s also why in countless readings, one never gets to the bottom of this book: It is a forged seamless unity, the speaker’s and the reader’s own territory of living imagination.”  – Marilyn Johnston (Weight of the Angel, Silk Fist Songs, and Against Disappearance. Her poetry has received six Pushcart Prize nominations and appears in many journals, including South Carolina Review, Worcester Review, and Poet Lore.)

Poet Charlie Mehrhoff wrote: “this frequented bookshelf here, less than three feet in length. T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth. ’55 Leaves of Grass. The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Ring of Bone. The Tao Te Ching. The Thirteen Petalled Rose. Rumi. Blaga. Reznikoff. Perse. Char. Rimbaud. others . . . what moves me most. for what it’s worth, where indra’s net resides.” (Mehrhoff is the author of over eight poetry books, including Complete With Tongue, Epictetus Press, available at SPD. His poems have appeared in Origin, The Sun, and Lilliput Review.)

Fleischer’s chapbook < Periodic Earth > has been published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, Pueblo, CO, 2016, Kyle Laws, editor. August 2016. It may be purchased at Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

Her poetry has been awarded first prizes by the University of Hartford, the City of Nagoya Japan Board of Education, the Under the Basho 2014 International Haiku Competition, and South by Southeast Editors’ Choice Award, with honorable mentions from two Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku Invitationals, and Naugatuck River Review.

Fleischer is an Arts New England magazine contributing writer for the arts in Connecticut. [Somewhere Between Creation and Destruction by Donna Fleischer  See more at Art New England, Sept/Oct 2014].

Her poetry is housed in: the Japanese Museum of Haiku Literature, Tokyo; Poets House, NYC; University of Massachusetts Amherst DuBois Library; the Canadian Haiku Society; California State Library Haiku Archives at Sacramento; and The Haiku Foundation, Winchester, VA.

Fleischer’s essay, The Black Swans of Ellen Carey: Of Necessary Poetic Realities (2010, 2014), is based on the art works of Ellen Carey, the ground-breaking, lens-based artist. It is the print catalogue essay (Akus Gallery and Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT, 2014) to the exhibition “Let There Be Light: The Black Swans of Ellen Carey”.

FIVE POEMS, written by Donna Fleischer, interrelating basketball, badminton, and baseball, are exhibited in LOCKER. ROOM. CULTURE. (Strategy, Play and Commentary in Sports and Art). This traveling exhibition, curated by Glenn LaVertu (The New School), who also wrote the catalogue essay, opened in 2015 at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery of Bristol Community College, Fall River, MA, and traveled to Central Connecticut State University, Samuel S. T. Chen Fine Arts Center, New Britain, CT that same year. Other exhibition artists include Sol LeWitt, Adrian Mangel, Frank J. Miles, Brendan Mulcahy, Kinga Wlodarska, and May Yao.

Legendary poet Sonia Sanchez honored Fleischer’s haiku with its inclusion in the 2013 anthology Peace Is A Haiku Song, where it joins the voices of Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Toi Derricotte, Alice Walker, Frank Sherlock, Yolanda Wisher, Michael McClintock, Tyrone McDonald, Kala Ramesh, Penny Harter, and others. The book may be purchased at http://muralarts.org/content/peace-haiku-song-0.

The useful knowledge press (New Haven, CT) published HaiKube™ No. 1 (December 2014), the first in a projected set of nine three-dimensional haiku broadsides by Fleischer, partnered with an original engraving by Allan Greenier. The letterpress poem and engraving are imposed on a lightweight cube composed of British paper Davey Boards wrapped by Arches paper letterpressed on 3 sides with this haiku (Presence, Martin Lucas, editor. UK)

peony – / a bulls’-eye of ants / within

Each side measures 2 and 5/8 in. HaiKube™ No.1 is $20.00.

Email greenier.allan@gmail.com for ordering information.

Poets for Living Waters (Amy King, Heidi Lynn Staples, Wendy Babiak, editors.) “Creating venues for poetry in support of healthy ocean communities” since the 2010 Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Spill and Ecocide, published “Mountain Meadow #71” in 2014 and other poems in 2010, including “The Golden Scorpion”.

Her haiku and tanka appear in the international poetry, prose, and art anthology, We Are All Japan (2012, Robert D. Wilson & Saša Važić, editors). This was a gift to the Japanese people as they began their struggle with the ongoing, devastating effects of The 2011 Tokyo Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown from which interminable radiation exposure has proved deadliest. A copy was presented to the Emperor and Empress of Japan and other copies were donated to libraries and schools in the affected towns.

Fleischer wrote the poem “a lit match sputters” in support of the #Occupy Wall Street Movement. It was published in The #Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, (Stephen Boyer and Filip Marinovich, editors; 908 pages perfect-bound and printed by THE SOURCE UNLTD, East Village, NYC, 2011. The editors had solicited and compiled poems throughout and following the twelve-week, above-ground #Occupy Wall Street movement that began in the fall of 2011 in Zuccoti Park, New York City. The Anthology includes poems by Adrienne Rich, Jonathan Skinner, Charles Bernstein, Eileen Myles, Jared Stanley, Seamus Heaney, James Scully, Burt Kimmelman, Martin Espada, Stephen Collis, Wanda Coleman, Anselm Berrigan, CA Conrad, Ariana Reines, Edgar Garcia, Krystal Languell, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Lynne-DeSilva-Johnson, Samuel Ace, Vincent Katz, Kevin Killian, Sparrow, Danny Schechter, Donna Fleischer and so many others. Order a copy from THE SOURCE UNLTD, NYC and donate it to your local library: 212.473.7833 or thesourceunltd.com.

Chapbooks

FLANEUR, a selection of 26 haibun (Longhouse Publishers, Vermont, 2024).

Every Day Earth, a selection of 40 haiku (Longhouse Publishers, Vermont, 2024).

from beyond my window: the Covid-19 poems  — short poems by Donna Fleischer, in a miniature, cloth-bound chapbook handmade by Eileen R. Tabios, editor, publisher, poet, and writer (Meritage Press, San Francisco, April 2020).

< Periodic Earth >. Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, Pueblo, CO, 2016. It may be purchased at Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

Twinkle, Twinkle. Longhouse Publishers, Guilford, VT, 2011.

indra’s net. bottle rockets press, Wethersfield, CT. 2003. Out of print and available free to read at Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/132231015/indra-s-net . The noted poet, Charlie Mehrhoff , wrote: “this frequented bookshelf here, less than three feet in length. T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth. ’55 Leaves of Grass. The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Ring of Bone. The Tao Te Ching. The Thirteen Petalled Rose. Rumi. Blaga. Reznikoff. Perse. Char. Rimbaud. others . . . what moves me most. for what it’s worth, where indra’s net resides.”

Collections

Intimate Boundaries. Self-produced from film negatives, offset web and sheetfed presses, and perfect-bound, Hartford, CT 1991. This collection of the poet’s early poetry includes the six poems for which she received the University of Hartford 1987 Creative Writing Award for Poetry, Virginia Hale, Ph.D. and George Michael Evica, Ph.D., judges. It may be purchased from the poet.

Other Core Samplings

MayDay magazine, issue 10, winter 2016, published Fleischer’s epic poem, “November”.

Fiera Lingue published a set of seven new poems in 2011, honoring Donna Fleischer to be among “those poets I evaluate as representative of our times” (Anny Ballardini, editor, publisher).

Fleischer’s haiku featured daily throughout the month of June 2010 at The Cornell University Mann Library’s Daily Haiku (Tom Clausen, editor).

The popular blog of Lilliput Review, Issa’s Untidy Hut, by Don Wentworth, editor of Lilliput Review and author of the poetry selections Past All Traps and Yield to the Willow, featured Fleischer’s essay, The American Haibun, and her poem, On Usedom.

Beginning in 2009 through 2014, Fleischer’s poetry regularly appeared at the CT Environmental News website (Christopher Zurcher, editor). CT Environmental Headlines is a daily, online index of environmentally-related newspaper and magazine articles relevant to Connecticut and proven invaluable to teachers, legislators, and eco-aware practitioners.

“Pink Slip”, a haibun, may be found in the rhizomatic magazine Exit Strata Print! Volume 2 (Brooklyn, 2013), as well as her essay “Field Notes from indra’s net and Pretty soon there’s my arm” in Exit Strata , and Fleischer’s haiku poetics at The Operating System; two poems – “in the bare spindly tree” and “traffic cone” were published in Solitary Plover; and “tree shadows” came out in roadrunner. “Please Stand By” was published by esque magazine (Amy King, Ana Božičević, editors) in their third issue, REVOLUTIONesque (2012); and On Barcelona (Halvard Johnson, editor) published a haibun “kHyal’s Barcelona” (2012) and “cell’d”, a free verse poem.

Curtis Dunlap, poet and editor of Blogging Along Tobacco Road, featured Donna’s work in his interview, Three Questions. 

Fleischer was assistant editor of bottle rockets, a journal of the small poem and of bottle rockets press anthologies and serial volumes from 2007 to 2013.

Feature readings include: The EDGE Reading Series #96, March 2023, Southington, CT, with Trace Peterson, poet, scholar, and publisher, who introduced Donna Fleischer; Luisa Caycedo-Kimura and Debra Kuhn also read in #96; all curated by Melissa Buckheit at FABLE. The Solitary Plover, issue #35, Winter 2022 poets, at the Dwight Foster Public Library, Fort Atkinson, WI; Wintonbury Poetry Series, Bloomfield, CT (April 2022); University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT (April, 2019); Syllable: The Reading Series, at Little River Restoratives, Hartford, CT (August 2018); Charter Oak Readings, Charter Oak Cultural Center, Downtown Hartford, CT (May 2018); Celebrate Bloomfield!, Prosser Library, Bloomfield, CT (2018, 2017, 2016); Hartford Loves Poetry, Hartford Public Library, Downtown Hartford CT (2015); Infinite Well Poetry Series, New Haven, CT (2014); The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (2013 & 2011); Capital Community College, Hartford, CT (2013); Forbes Library, Northampton MA (2013); WordForge Reading Series at Billings Forge, Hartford, CT (2012, 2010); cell39 gallery, Ludlow, MA (2012); and Pegasus Gallery of Middlesex Community College, Middletown, CT (2011).

Fleischer is listed with Poets & Writers, Fiera Lingue, The Living Haiku Anthology, and The Haiku Foundation, which seeks to establish the importance of haiku “as a literary vehicle in the present and future”. She is a member of the United Haiku and Tanka Society.

Awards and Other Honors

“Cold sun” by Donna Fleischer received the Nagoya City, Japan Board of Education Award for Best Haiku. It was submitted by Dr. Kōko Katō, editor and publisher of Kō*, where it had appeared in Kō vol 28 no 4. She made the announcement with her commentary on the poem in the new issue of Kō vol 29 no 4, autumn-winter 2014.

The edited journal, Under the Basho, honored Donna Fleischer’s poem “late winter –” First Prize in its 2014 Under the Basho International Haiku Contest, that brought with it a $500 cash award and a print broadside.

“Night Shift”, 2014 Semi-Finalist, 5th Annual Naugatuck River Review Poetry Competition

Honourable Mention Recipient – earth day haiku and short essay by Donna Fleischer
, Vancouver Cherry Blossom 2013 Haiku Invitational

“Your Closet”, 2013 Semi-Finalist, 4th Annual Naugatuck River Review Poetry Contest

Recipient of the Merit 2011 Honorable Mention for best anthology, seed packets ~ Stanford M. Forrester, editor, Donna Fleischer, contributing editor. Seed Packets: An Anthology of Flower Haiku. Windsor, Connecticut: bottle rockets press, 2010. 5 x 6.5 inches,100 pages, perfectbound.ISBN 978-0-9792257-4-1.

Honourable Mention Recipient
Vancouver Cherry Blossom 2011 Haiku Invitational

South by Southeast Editors’ Choice Award for Haiku, 2010

University of Hartford 1987 Creative Writing Award for Poetry

Donna Fleischer and Lori Anderson Moseman read at Infinite Well, New Haven, CT  on April 26, 2014. “come to silence / come to language / the way it comes . . .’ with deep appreciation to Lori Anderson Moseman, Donna Fleischer, Christina O’Connor, and Infinite Well  for a beautiful, rainy reading to bring April to an intricate close,” wrote poet Katie Yates, afterwards. From green tea and honey in a jar, adjacent viridescent walls, window seats, zafus, chairs, and wooden floor, poems became, from between the reading side and the listening side, responded Donna Fleischer.

“A Cat’s Footprints” was published by A Hundred Gourds 3:3 on June 1, 2014.

A Shisan Renku was composed on Skype by: Taro Kunugi, Japan; Kris Moon – sabaki, Japan; Donna Fleischer, Dennis Chibi Holmes, and William Sorlien, USA. (2013).

Anthology Print Publications

2024       Of Hartford in Many Lights, Dennis Barone, editor; (Grayson Books, West Hartford, CT); poetry written on the almost 400-year-old city’s many architectures.

2019        The End of the World Project, two volumes, edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman, Richard Lopez, and T.C. Marshall (Moria Books, Indiana, 2019, William Allegrezza, editor) on the theme of how does one write in the face of the unspeakable, of ongoing ecocide. . . 
If you navigate to the bottom of the Moria Books page at this link you will find how to download or purchase the books — http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html 

2019       Stonewall’s Legacy, a poetry anthology, “aims to serve as a poetic record of where LGBT+ people were, are, and will be as a global community.” – Lambda Literary. Prior to its June, 2019 publication date, Stonewall’s Legacy is available for pre-order from Local Gems Press, Long Island, NY, at Local Gems Press. Rusty Rose and Marc Rosen, editors.

2017       Verse Osmosis: Poems and Translations by The Boiler House Poets, 2015 Tupelo Press – Mass MoCA Residency. 2017. Blurb. Ann Dernier, editor. Available for purchase at Blurb.

2016       In the House of the Hangman – Volume 3, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Laughing/Ouch/Cube /Publications, 2016, p.1613 appropriation from Donna Fleischer
In the House of the Hangman – Volume 3

2016       Beyond the Grave: Afterlife Haiku, Robert Epstein, editor. Modern English Tanka Press.

2015        A Vast Sky, Tuttle Publishing, Bruce Ross, editor.

2015        HAIKU 2015, edited by Scott Metz and Lee Gurga, Modern Haiku Press, 2015, 100 notable haiku from 2014 selected by the editors of the award-winning Haiku 21.

2014        Contemporary Haibun, volume 15, Red Moon Press, Jim Kacian, editor.

2014        HAIKU 2014, edited by Scott Metz and Lee Gurga, Modern Haiku Press, 2014, 100 notable haiku from 2013 selected by the editors of the award-winning Haiku 21. Perfectbound, 110 pages.

2013       The haiku “private keep off” appears in Peace Is A Haiku Song (The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Sonia Sanchez and Yolanda Wisher, editors)

2013       Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation (Kamesan Books, Dimitar Anakiev, editor)

2012       The tanka, “American kid” and two haiku — “Samurai bones” and “Hototogisu” appear in We Are All Japan anthology (Alley Cat Books, ltd; Robert D. Wilson & Saša Važić, editors)

2012       “The Red Photogram”, a haibun, appears in Visions, Voices, and Verses, An Anthology of Poems of Ekphrasis, based on permanent art works in the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT.  Exiles Press Colin Haskins, Andrea Barton, editors

2011       The #Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. Stephen Boyer and Filip Marinovich, editors. THE SOURCE UNLTD, East Village, NYC, 2011

2011      Dreams Wander On, Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness. Robert Epstein, editor. Modern English Tanka Press. Baltimore

2011      Wang Ping’s Kinship of Rivers, Wang Ping, editor)

2010      seed packets, an anthology of flower haiku, bottle rockets press. Windsor, CT

2007      lanterns, a firefly anthology, bottle rockets press. Windsor, CT

2003      Contemporary Haibun Volume 4, Red Moon Press. Winchester, VA

2003       The Haiku Society of America (HSA) Members’ Anthology. NY, NY

2002      bits of itself, HSA Members’ Anthology. NY, NY

1995    Charter Oak Poets ii, A Poetry Anthology. Anthony Keller, editor. Charter Oak Cultural Center. Hartford, CT

1994    Wadsworth Atheneum New England Docents Catalogue.
Robert Saunders, editor. Hartford, CT

Print and Online Periodical Publications

1999 – the present:

A) Glimpse) Of), (Dimitra Ioannou, editor, Athens, Greece)

A Hundred Gourds 3:3 June 2014  (William Sorlien, Renku Editor)

Annandale Dream Gazette (Robert Kelly, Lynn Behrendt, editors)

Artis Magazine (Will Steigerwald, editor, Hartford, CT)

Asahi Shimbun Newspaper (Japan)

Autumn Moon Haiku Journal (Bruce Ross, editor)

Back Room Live ! (Valyntina Grenier, editor)

Blogging Along Tobacco Road (Curtis Dunlap, editor)

Blo͞o Outlier Poetry Journal (Alan Summers, editor)

Bones (Johannes S. H. Berg, editor)

bottle rockets (Stanford M. Forrester, editor)

Brass Bell (Zee Zahava, editor)

cattails (United Haiku & Tanka Society editors)

Contemporary Haibun, Vols 4 and 15 (Red Moon Press, Jim Kacian, editor)

Contemporary Haibun Online (Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, and Ken Jones, editors)

Dispatches From the Poetry Wars (Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson, editors)

EOAGH (Trace Peterson, editor)

esque magazine (Amy King and Ana Božičević, editors)

Fiera Lingue (Anny Ballardini, editor)

Frogpond (NY, NY)

Hummingbird (the late Phyllis Walsh, editor, Madison, WI)

Issa’s Untidy Hut (Don Wentworth, editor)

is/let (Scott Metz, editor)

Journal of Renga and Renku, volume 3 (Norman Darlington, editor)

Kinship of Rivers (Wang Ping, editor)

Kō (Dr. Kōko Katō, editor, Nagoya, Japan)

Lilliput Review (Don Wentworth, editor, Pittsburgh, PA)

Marsh Hawk Press Review (Eileen R. Tabios, Guest Editor, NY)

MayDay Magazine (Okla Elliott, editor, New American Press, Milwaukee, WI))

Modern Haiku (Charles Trumbull, editor, Evanston, IL)

moongarlic (Brendan Slater and Sheila Windsor, editors)

Naugatuck River Review (Lori Desrosiers, editor, Westfield, MA)

On Barcelona (Halvard Johnson, editor)

Otata (John Martone, editor, Charleston, IL)

Otoliths (Mark Young, editor, Australia)

Poets for Living Waters (Amy King and Heidi Lynn Staples, editors)

Presence (Martin Lucas, editor, England)

Roadrunner (Scott Metz, editor)

Salamander Cove (Annie Wyndham, editor)

Solitary Plover  (Tom Montag, editor)

South by Southeast (Stephen Addis, Josh Hockensmith, editors, Midlothian, VA)

Spiral Orb (Eric Magrane, editor)

The Journal newspaper, Bloomfield, CT Poetry Showcase, (Tom Nicotera, editor)

The Living Haiku Anthology (Don Baird and Sheila Windsor, co-editors)

The Mainichi Daily News (Japan)

The Operating System (formerly Exit Strata, Lynne Desilva-Johnson, editor)

tinywords ( d. f. tweney, editor)

TRUCK (Anny Ballardini, Guest Editor, November 2014 issue)

TRUCK (Eileen R. Tabios, Guest Editor, March 2015, issue)

Under the Basho (Don Baird and Kala Ramesh, co-editors)

Wales Haiku Journal (Paul Chambers, editor)

Zen Space (Marie Marshall, editor)

Feature and Group Readings

The EDGE Reading Series, transmigrated from Tucson, CO, by poet and creator Melissa Buckheit, curator, introduced by poet, publisher, educator, and scholar, Trace Peterson, with poets Debora Kuan and Luisa Caycedo-Kimura, at The Fable Tea Room, Southington, CT, April, 2023.

The Solitary Plover, group readings by poets of work published in The Solitary Plover, issue #35, Winter 2022, at the Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson, WI, and hosted by Amy Lutzke, Assistant Library Director, April 2022.

The SHEs, Donna Fleischer, Rhett Watts, Sherri Bedingfield, and Marilyn Johnston, who continue their in-person, five-year poetry workshops with one another at the  Wintonbury Poetry Series, Bloomfield, CT, hosted by Tom Nicotera,  April 2022.

Eat It Raw: Reading Poems by Donna Fleischer, In Celebration of Women Everywhere, Feature Reading Invitation from the University of Hartford’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, West Hartford, CT, April 1, 2019.

Reading Ecopoems by Donna Fleischer for Dr. Bin Zhu’s Ecology Class, Feature Reading, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT, March 26, 2019.

Syllable: The Reading Series, features poets and writers Tess Scriptunas, Donna Fleischer,
Danielle Bonanno, Andrew Altamirano, and alexandria hicks, with music by Lake Geneva, at Little River Restoratives, Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT, on August 5, 2018, 7 pm.

The Charter Oak Readings – feature readings by Donna Fleischer and Leslie McGrath at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Downtown Hartford, CT; hosted by poet, Jim Finnegan, creator of The Charter Oak Readings; May 6, 2018.

A Sampling of Bloomfield Poets – feature readings by Bloomfield poets, including Tom Nicotera, Marilyn Johnston, and Donna Fleischer, as part of Celebrate Bloomfield! Prosser Public Library, June, 2016, 2017, 2018.

Naugatuck River Review issue 12 Launch Reading at Forbes Library, Northampton, MA, October 4, 2014.

Donna Fleischer and Lori Anderson Moseman read at Infinite Well, New Haven, CT, curated by Katie Yates and Christina O’Connor, on April 26, 2014.

Hartford Loves Poetry:  Among 24 presenters of poems in languages such as Quechua, Tamil, Mandarin, Bosnian, Hindi, Kenyang, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Spanish, were poet Donna Fleischer who read three of her original poems in English, alternating with Bettina Viereck who read her translations of Fleischer’s poems into the German. Their readings can be found 23 minutes and 51 seconds into the two-and-a-half-hour video. April 19, 2014: HARTFORD LOVES POETRY with Bessy Reyna, Hartford Public Library, Downtown Hartford, in honor of multi-lingual poems and their English translations. (2015)

The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA), “A Home of One’s Own”, a project in support of the New Britain Mayor’s Ten-Year Workplan to End Homelessness, sponsored and televised by the City of New Britain, the University Museum Community Collaborative, and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (April 2013)

Release reading by winners of Winter 2014 contest issue of  the Naugatuck River Review, Forbes Library, Northampton,  MA, March 8, 2014.

National Arts Program Foundation 2013 22nd Annual Competition in collaboration with the Community Renewal Team and the Free Poets Collective, Poems of Ekphrasis, Hartford, CT (January 2013)

WordForge Reading Series, Hartford, CT, one of two featured readers (12.10.12)

Prosser Public Library, Wintonbury Branch, Bloomfield, CT, one of two featured readers (December, 2012)

The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (2012)

Forbes Library, Northampton, MA (2012)

Stephen Persing’s Art Note, UnRegular Radio Boston: The Red Photogram, a poem by Donna Fleischer (2011)

cell39 gallery, Indian Orchard, MA (2011)

Pegasus Gallery of Middlesex Community College, Middletown, CT (2010)

WordForge Reading Series at Billings Forge, Hartford, CT (2010)

Windsor Public Library, Windsor, CT (2009)

Prosser Public Library, Bloomfield, CT (2000)

Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, CT (1998)

MS Gallery, New Britain, CT (1996)

Artworks, Hartford, CT (1995)

Buttonwood Tree, Middletown, CT (1995)

Published Essays by Donna Fleischer

Rapture in Oneiric Blue, a hybrid prose poem essay of ekphrasis on the photo  – light – art of artist Ellen Carey. Ellen Carey is an American artist known for conceptual photography exploring non-traditional approaches to light involving process, exposure, and paper that overturn the photograph’s conventional status as an iconic “sign” or reproduction of a physical object. (Wikipedia, ellencareyphotography.com)

“An Altar of Sorts”, May 2018, my (small press) writing day, Rob McLennan, editor.

Earth Day, April 2014 essay on the writing of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku Invitational Honourable Mention poem by Donna Fleischer titled “earth day” at the request of the editor.

The Black Swans of Ellen Carey: Of Necessary Poetic Realities  (2010, 2014). This is the essay to the exhibition catalogue “Let There Be Light: The Black Swans of Ellen Carey” published by Akus Gallery and Eastern Connecticut State University. The catalogue in full is available for viewing, and the essay may be read in its entirety, by clicking on this link:  See the catalogue for the exhibit.

Poetry and Money (#7): Donna Fleischer | A 3-Question Interview, A Sample Poem, and Book List Feature, part of the 2014  “Money and Poetry” series originated by  poet Eileen R. Tabios.

“The American Haibun” by Donna Fleischer (Donna Fleischer © 2008, Lilliput Review, Don Wentworth, editor, 2011).

Broadsides of Poems by Donna Fleischer

useful knowledge press (New Haven, CT), in 2014, published HaiKube™ No. 1 — a 3-D broadside, with a haiku by Fleischer — peony – / a bulls’-eye of ants / within (Presence, Martin Lucas, editor, UK) — and an original engraving by Allan Greenier, letter-pressed and imposed on a lightweight cube composed of British paper Davey Boards wrapped by Arches paper. Each side measures 2 and 5/8 in.

The 2014 Under the Basho International Haiku Contest First Prize haiku “late winter –” by Donna Fleischer is embossed on a broadside depicting the classical Japanese poet Issa, seated beneath the willow tree of which he wrote, and with seal.

The haiku “rail cars stacked with wood” by Donna Fleischer, was ink-stamped and illustrated on recycled plastic by poet and artist Lily Brown, on January 17, 2011, in Athens Georgia (pressing on press, Heidi Lynn Staples, editor).

The haiku “fish clouds birds” by Donna Fleischer, 11 in. x 17 in. four-color process, was offset-printed on recycled, 100lb glossy stock (Connecticut River Coastal Conservation District, Inc., 2009).

Interviews with Donna Fleischer

“Donna Fleischer – Haibun: Three Questions” (Blogging Along Tobacco Road, Curtis Dunlap, editor, 2011)

“Donna Fleischer on Creativity” (Miriam’s Well, an online interview by writer, artist, and editor Miriam Sagan, 2013)

Archives

The poetry of Donna Fleischer is housed in the National Poetry Library, London; the Japanese Museum of Haiku Literature, Tokyo; Poets House, NYC; University of Massachusetts Amherst DuBois Library; the Canadian Haiku Society; California State Library Haiku Archives, Sacramento; The Haiku Foundation, Winchester, VA; The Haiku Foundation Digital Library; the Jim Kacian Archival Library; UB (the State University of New York at Buffalo); and the Central Public Library, Downtown Buffalo, NY.

Literary Arts Exhibition

April 9 –30, 2011 — “UNTITLED: Graphic Books, Art Books, and Literary Art Illustrating a Diverse World”. Curated by Stephanie Elliott, Publicist, Wesleyan University Press. MAC650 gallery, Middletown, CT. three poetry chapbooks by Donna Fleischer on exhibit: Twinkle, Twinkle (Longhouse Publishers, 2011), indra’s net  (bottle rockets press, 2003), and Intimate Boundaries (self-produced, 1991).

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