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.