Contributor Spotlight Interview:
Joan L. Huffman
JL Huffman is a former LPN, who continued her medical education and is now a retired Trauma Surgeon/ICU doctor. She is a prior medical editor of Northeast Florida Medicine, is published in the surgical literature, and has won local, state, and national poetry awards. She is the author of Almanac: The Four Seasons, Family Treasons, and Voyage: Vista and Verse. She lives a full life as an avid world traveler and gardener. The author is exercising her muse and writing in diverse genres: poetry, memoir and fiction. In 2021 and 2022 she focused on writing haiku, other poetry, and a fiction novel.
1. Basho, Buson, or Issa? (No saying Shiki, even if that's the correct answer.)
Basho.
2. Who is one person who has been a mentor to you in the short form community?
Roberta Beach Jacobson (@beach_haiku) Early on in my haiku endeavors, she shared a plethora of journal opportunities.
3. Publications, where was your first and your most recent?
First poem: 2006. Mad Poets Review, Volume 20, “Terrible Questions” Mad Poets Society, Philadelphia, Editor Eileen M. D’Angelo
First haiku: 3/19/21 The Asahi Shimbun
Editor David McMurray
Most recent haiku: 7/12/23 Haiku Girl Summer
Editor Allyson Whipple
4. Favorite horror movie or book, romance movie or book, writer or film director working in a language you can't fluently speak?
Don’t care for either horror or romance. I’m most intrigued by historical (Jean M Auel), post-apocalyptic fiction (Tom Abrahams), and mysteries (Patricia Cornwell).
5. Favorite jazz, folk, blues singer or musician?
Jazz - Diana Krall; folk - Joan Baez.
6. Who's a great haiku or senryu poet whose work speaks to you that you’d like more people to be aware of?
Alan Summers (@haikutec) - incredible poet and wonderful educator.
7. Politically if you had the ability to fix one issue via policy changes what would it be?
Political term limits-ad nauseam terms produce too much graft and reduce the influx of fresh ideas and solutions.
8. Describe a pet you treasure/d, your own or someone else’s.
Plato, our Australian Shepherd/Red Heeler mix - a sheepdog/cattle dog. Very serious, hence his name. He's a working dog, herds me, my wife & our other dog, his brother, Paris a Labradoodle who is ADHD.
9. What season do you feel you write best or most frequently and why?
I love to write about all the seasons as we progress through them, here at our cabin on a mountain top in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.
10. If you could nominate one poem (not your own) from the last year and its poet for an individual Touchstone award, who and what would they be?
Christina Chin (@Christina_haiku) Her haiga art is gorgeous and her words are powerful.
fitted with correction lens Cassiopeia on a clear winter sky
Christina Chin
Better Than Starbucks Poetry and Fiction journal
May 2022 Vol VII No II
11. Who is one historical person whose activism or accomplishments especially inspire you, and why?
Philosophically: My namesake Joan of Arc (1412-1431). A visionary, feminist, freedom fighter, and martyr.
Scientifically: Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). A physicist, engineer and futurist, who worked in field of wireless power distribution. A genius ahead of his time.
12. What have you learned about writing poetry you wish you realized earlier?
As a younger person I wrote long narrative poetry. As I've aged I've come to appreciate the concise brevity of the haiku short forms.
13. One food, drink you adore?
Food - Manchego cheese
Drink- a Negroni (takes me back to a small cafe in Rome)
Song -100 Years (Five for Fighting) first heard it played as background music at an acquaintance’s memorial.
14. In your poems what bird, plant, weather pattern has appeared frequently?
I can’t find a specific pattern - my poems are a veritable garden aviary which I travel through in rain and shine.
15. If you could get a roundtrip plane ticket and accommodations comped to any place, where would you visit?
Iceland to see the Aurora borealis, ride an Icelandic horse (we’ve been world travelers but have never visited the area).
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