Julie Schwerin

2024 Haiku Chapbook Contest Winner

Julie Schwerin’s clear-eyed, sometimes gently humorous and always open-hearted haiku impart an almost cosmic sense of accord—just the balm our fraught spirits could use in these discordant times. Spending quality time with the simple yet cumulatively moving poems in this fine collection, I begin to feel that just perhaps (in Julian of Norwich’s words) “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

— Scott Mason, author/editor of The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes

 

Julie Schwerin came to haiku while in the midst of cancer and grief journeys, writing haiku to focus on the present moment with acceptance, wonder and appreciation. She was one of seventeen poets featured in A New Resonance 9 (Red Moon Press) and has co-edited, along with Jim Kacian, Echoes 2, A New Resonance 11, A New Resonance 12 and A New Resonance 13 ( Red Moon Press). Schwerin was instrumental in establishing several haiku installations in the Midwest including The Forest Haiku Walk at the Holmes County Open Air Art Museum in Millersburg, Ohio (2015 – present), the Seasons of Haiku Trail at The Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio (2018-2019) and Words in Bloom: A Year of Haiku at the Chicago Botanic Garden (2020-2021) to feature the work of other poets and bring further awareness to haiku. Schwerin is an associate editor at The Heron’s Nest and member of the Red Moon Anthology editorial team. She has resided in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin since 2021.