Mark Brooks (Shimi)
creator of haijinx
editor-in-chief
Mark Brooks lives in Georgetown, 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, for a time also adding the haikai twitter feed @haijinx. On March 20, 2010, the equinox, Alan, Carmen Sterba, and Mark Brooks announced the return of haijinx with the haijinx quarterly. The first issue back appeared in December 2010.
Mark has used the haigô Shimi (silverfish) for haikai since 2004. Earlier haiku and renku are signed Mark Brooks.
A Handful of Pebbles | Selected Haiku
offsite
Haiku Registry Profile (2010) | Poets & Writers Profile
Snapshot Press page for A Handful of Pebbles
Interview @ Sol Magazine (2001)
Three Questions @ Blogging Along Tobacco Road (2010)
Cornell’s Mann Library Daily Haiku Poet of the Month (September 2010)
and originally from 
