Victor Ortiz

2024 Haiku Chapbook Contest Runner-Up

“Victor Ortiz’s gone/to seed is an intimate collection of haiku and senryu that balances traditional haiku aesthetics and experimentation. Ortiz embarks on a spiritual journey examining the impact of family, migration, place, and nature as he explores the intersections of identity and belonging. gone/to seed is a stirring collection that reveals more depth with every reading.”

— Chad Lee Robinson, author of The White Buffalo

Victor Ortiz discovered haiku in the late 1990s while thinking about how to engage his students in using Latin creatively and he’s been hooked ever since. Victor’s poetry may be found in print and on-line haiku journals and anthologies. Several of his poems have won awards, as have his chapbooks gone/to seed (Backbone Press, 2024), the runner-up in Backbone’s Haiku Chapbook Contest, and Into Borrego Valley (Red Moon Press, 2012), a Merit Book Award recipient from the Haiku Society of America. He was a panel member of the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (2020-2023) and has served as the Washington Regional coordinator for the Haiku Society of America. He resides with his artist wife Mimi in Bellingham, Washington.