Winona Baker, beloved elder and exemplary haiku poet, died at home on October 23, 2020, at 96. Condolences go out to the Baker family, among them Winona’s daughter, haiku poet Helen Baker.
A life-long crafter of words, Winona also loved the society of writers. Many of us in the haiku community were fortunate to spend time with her, most commonly at the former Gabriola Haiku Gathering, which took place a short ferry ride from her home in Nanaimo, BC. But Winona’s achievements in haiku also took her as far away as Toronto, Romania and Japan. In Yamagata, Japan, in 1989, she was awarded the Foreign Minister’s Prize in a contest marking the 300th anniversary of the journey Basho chronicled in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Her winning haiku:
moss-hung trees
a deer moves into
the hunter’s silence
Winona’s poetry, published worldwide, has appeared in more than 70 anthologies. Her publications include four books of haiku and senryu: Clouds Empty Themselves: Island Haiku (1991), Moss-Hung Trees: Haiku of the West Coast (1992), Even a Stone Breathes (2000), and Nature Here Is Half Japanese (2010). Winona’s writing life and accomplishments have been documented most recently in Moonflowers: Pioneering Women Haiku Poets in Canada (2020).
Here are a few more of Winona’s haiku . . .
old pond—
frog’s eggs float
in my reflection
fourteen photos hang
over bouquets of flowers
propped in drifted snow
[December 6 is the anniversary of the massacre, by a man, of 14 women engineering students at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.]
prize sweet peas
where the outhouse was emptied
last spring
summer trail
a trashed car in the salal
rusting in peace
hike in falling leaves
the happiness
in the setter’s tail
he brings in the cold
a perfect snowflake melts
in his dark hair
Christmas card list—
so many names
crossed out
in the stubble
a ball of blue wool
unwinds in the wind
a dark path
in the graveyard
ends in a snowman
river
carries light
to the sea
===========
Vicki McCullough
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