Bruce Ross is a Canadian poet, author, humanities educator and past president of the Haiku Society of America

Haiku Society of America

The Haiku Society of America is a non-profit organization composed of haiku poets, editors, critics, publishers and enthusiasts that promotes the composition and appreciation of haiku in English. It was founded in 1968 and sponsors meetings, lectures, workshops, readings and contests...

. He was born in Hamilton

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

.

Ross has taught Japanese poetry (in translation) and painting forms for many years at a number of institutions, including Empire State College

Empire State College

Empire State College, one of the thirteen arts and science colleges of the State University of New York, is a multi-site institution offering associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees. It is primarily oriented towards the adult learner...

, Burlington College

Burlington College

Burlington College is a private liberal arts college located in Burlington, Vermont that offers Associate, Bachelor's, and Masters degrees, as well as several professional certificate programs...

, the University of Vermont

University of Vermont

The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...

, the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

, and the University of Maine

University of Maine

The University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...

. He has lectured on haiku

Haiku

' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, and Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. His anthologies and instructional books are in numerous libraries. Ross is well-known for his claim that Matsuo Bashō

Matsuo Basho

, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...

 was the inventor of haiku.

Ross's original English language haiku

Haiku in English

Haiku in English is a development of the Japanese haiku poetic form in the English language.Contemporary haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries....

, senryū

Senryu

is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer total morae . Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious...

, haibun

Haibun

Haibun is a literary composition that combines prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and includes, but is not limited to, the following forms of prose: autobiography, biography, diary, essay, history, prose poem, short story and travel literature....

, tanka, haiga

Haiga

' is a style of Japanese painting based on the aesthetics of haikai, from which haiku poetry derives, which often accompanied such poems in a single piece. Like the poetic forms it accompanied, haiga was based on simple, yet often profound, observations of the everyday world...

, and collaborative renku have appeared in international haiku journals, as have his reviews, and articles.

Ross lives with his wife Astrid, a physician and English language haiku poet, in Hampden, Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

.

Poetry

• thousands of wet stones M.A.F. Portlandville New York (1988)
• "The Trees" The Plowman Whitby Ontario (1991)
• among floating duckweed HMS Press London Ontario (1994)
• Silence: Collected Haiku HMS Press London Ontario (1997)
• summer drizzles: haiku and haibun HMS Press London Ontario (2005)
• "endless small waves haibun" HMS Press London Ontario (2008)

Non-fiction

• "The Inheritance of Animal Symbols in Modern Literature and World Culture" Peter Lang (1988)
• "If Not Higher, Lectures on the Poetics of Spiritual Presence and Absence" Peter Lang (1999)
• "How to Haiku, A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms" Tuttle (2002)
• "Venturing upon Dizzy Heights, Lectures and Essays on Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts" Peter Lang (2008)

Anthologies edited

• Haiku Moment, An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku (1993)
• Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun (1998)