About Shimi
Mark Brooks (Shimi)
creator of haijinx
editor-in-chief
editor, South America, Europe, Asia
Mark Brooks lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two boys.
Mark's poetry has been published and anthologized worldwide, including several editions of the
Red Moon Anthology. His haiku and renku have often been honored with awards, including the Mainichi Haiku Contest (first prize), the BHS's James W. Hackett International Haiku Award (highly commended), the HSA's Bernard Lionel Einbond Renku Competition (multiple firsts and seconds), the Snapshots Haiku Calendar Competition (winner and runners-up), and the Penumbra Haiku Competition (finalists).
Mark's first manuscript won The Snapshot Press Haiku Collection Competition in 2002 and was published as
A Handful of Pebbles (Snapshot Press, 2006).
Mark has given talks on haiku and renku in throughout the United States and his presentation on kigo to the HSA quarterly meeting ("The Poetics of Kigo", Long Beach, December 2001) was well-received that he was invited to repeat it at the next national meeting ("An Approach to Kigo", New Orleans, September 2002). This talk will be published later this year.
Mark created the popular haikai journal
haijinx in 2001, as well as Mark's Haiku Place (2000, haikai link depot later the hiho project) and the
haijinx weekly wire (2002, haikai news feed). All of these projects suspended activity from 2003 through 2009.
In 2010, Mark relaunched the
haijinx site on the lunar new year, quickly adding the haikai twitter feed
@haijinx. This new version of the
haijinx wire provides haikai news and deadline reminders to the Twitter public as well as to subscribers through a variety of delivery options.
On March 20, 2010, the equinox, Alan, Carmen Sterba, and Mark Brooks announced the return of
haijinx with the
haijinx quarterly. The first regular weekly, monthly, and bi-monthly columns appear on the new
haijinx site in April 2010, including Mark's weekly column of Bashô in translation:
firefly in the brambles.
Mark has used the haigô Shimi (silverfish) for haikai since 2004. Earlier haiku and renku are signed Mark Brooks.
firefly in the brambles: Bashô and his translators
Haiku Registry Profile | A Handful of Pebbles | Selected Haiku
Interview @ Sol Magazine (2001)
Three Questions @ Blogging Along Tobacco Road (2010)
Website: http://www.haijinx.org
Shimi has written
140 articles so far, you can find them below.
Written by Shimi
haijinx welcomes Roberta Beary as the haijinx quarterly editor for haibun. To learn more about Roberta Beary’s work, please visit http://www.robertabeary.com/. For each haijinx issue, you may submit up to 2 haibun. No single haibun should exceed 150 words. We do not consider any haibun that has been previously published or accepted for publication in any form. We [...]
January 13, 2011
Written by Shimi
Shooting My Poetry Mouth Off by Richard Krawiec haijinx proudly announces the restart of its regular columns with the January 2011 edition of Richard Krawiec’s Shooting My Poetry Mouth Off. Please enjoy this new column today: January 2011 • Third Column
January 11, 2011
Written by Shimi
(click the haiga to enter)
December 2, 2010
Written by Shimi
Dear friends and fans of haijinx, The summer issue of haijinx has obviously been delayed. Pressing personal and business matters have kept the editor, Mark Brooks, offline most of the summer and into autumn. Those issues resolved, Mark is back online now full time and production has resumed on the late issue. The last week has [...]
August 17, 2010
and originally from 
