Sunday, January 4, 2009

Brett Peruzzi - Three Questions

Brett Peruzzi writes from his home in Framingham, Massachusetts. After majoring in English as an undergraduate, he earned a graduate degree in technical and professional writing and has worked in the technical communication field for over twenty years as a writer, editor, educator, and manager. He also has worked as a freelance journalist, covering topics ranging from microbrewed beer to Italian proverbs. Brett began attending meetings of the fledgling Boston Haiku Society in the late 1980s and soon after started publishing haiku and haibun in a variety of publications and anthologies. He is a founding member of the Metro West Renku Association, a trio of poets combining the traditional Japanese renga form with blues-influenced music forms. In addition to his appearances in print and online poetry journals, he has also been a featured poetry performer at a wide variety of venues in the Boston area.



1) Why do you write haiku?

For me haiku has an economy and distilled essence of our lives and world that is unparalleled in literature. I have been writing and publishing haiku for over 20 years now and no matter how busy my life has become, with things like relationships, parenting, and my career, there is always time to write haiku, in comparison to longer literary forms. Also, as a long-time student and practitioner of Buddhism, haiku is a wonderful way of seeing things clearly, just as they are in the present moment, and discovering beauty in the simple things found in our everyday existence.

2) What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I write (as well as perform) a lot of renku with my friends Raffael DeGruttola and Paul David Mena as the Metro West Renku Association (http://www.myspace.com/metrowestrenkuassociation). I also produce the occasional haibun. I have also written and published free verse poems periodically over the years.

3) Of the many wonderful haiku you've written, what do you consider to be your top three? (Please provide original publication credits.)


deep summer —
the sweet-smelling wake
of a hay wagon

The Heron's Nest, Volume III, Number 3, March 2001



A phoebe's cry —
river water drips
from the stilled canoe paddle

Modern Haiku, Volume XXIII, Number 3, Fall, 1992



A car's dragging muffler
throws a trail of sparks
autumn night

Frogpond, Volume XIII, Number 4, November, 1990


Cheers,

Brett



If you've been enjoying this weekly series and have not contributed, please consider sharing your response to the three little questions that Brett answered. You must be a published poet in order to participate.

Liam Wilkinson will be our guest next week.

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