Author's Statement :: A poem will almost write itself: in a Dada kind of way; in the Greek poïesis communal sense; in the Mexican poet Heriberto Yépez's ethopoetics sense of re-writing one's self, stepping through one's ego to get beyond it, to scrape down to human being. The poem writes through my neural interstitium, so discovered-named by neuroscientists in 2023 — the juicy layer of neural cells just beneath the epidermis that continuously communicates with all neural cells making us whole, beyond the binary and duality of western thought, making Bashō's in-sight that to know about the pine one must go to the pine. I listen through the commotion for clarity. Wholism within our individual existences interacts with, is interdependent with, all organic and inorganic life. I try to write with and for this, whether it be a sense or a sound, a color or a feeling. I try to find what is there behind the night. Poems will do that. The Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, as the heteronymous Alberto Caeiro, wrote in The Keeper of Sheep: "How hard it is to have eyes and to see only the visible!" I wholeheartedly concur.
CHAPBOOKS • Baby in Space, 27 experimental-sequential haiku, Half Day Moon Press, (No. 16 in the HDMP Digital Chapbook Series ISSN 2992-9571), 2024 • Flaneur, 26 haibun, Longhouse Publishers, 2024 • Every Day Earth, 40 haiku, Longhouse Publishers, 2024 • from beyond my window: the Covid-19 Poems, haiku, Meritage Press, San Francisco, 2020 • < Periodic Earth >, free verse, Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, Pueblo, CO, 2016. • Twinkle, Twinkle, short poems, Longhouse Publishers, Guilford, VT, 2010. • indra’s net, haibun, bottle rockets press, Wethersfield, CT, 2003, out of print and free to read at Scrib'd: https://www.scribd.com/doc/132231015/ind... • Intimate Boundaries, Selected Poems, self-produced, 1991.
ANTHOLOGIES • Of Hartford in Many Lights (Grayson Books, West Hartford, CT, 2024, Dennis Barone, Deborah Ducoff-Barone, editors) • Virus Time: Collected Writings by Older Lesbians, (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, Boston, 2020, Alice Fisher, Sarah Pearlman, Sue Reamer, editors) • The End of the World Project, Vol 1 (Moria Press, IN, 2019, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Richard Lopez, T.C. Marshall, editors) • Verse Osmosis. The Boiler House Poets Tupelo Press-Mass MoCA Residency, Ann Dernier, editor, 2016 • A Vast Sky (Bruce Ross, editor, 2015) • Beyond the Grave (Robert Epstein, editor, 2015) • Haiku 2015 and Haiku 2014 (Lee Gurga, Scott Metz, editors) • Contemporary Haibun, Vols 4 & 15 (Jim Kacian, editor, 2003, 2014) • Peace Is A Haiku Song (City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Sonia Sanchez and Yolanda Wisher, editors, 2013) • Journal of Renga and Renku, Vol 3, (Darlington Press. 2013) • Kamesan's World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation, (Dimitar Anakiev, editor, Kamesan Books, 2013) • We Are All Japan (Alley Cat Books, ltd; Robert D. Wilson, Saša Važić, editors, 2012) • #Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, (Stephen Boyer, Filip Marinovich, editors, NY, NY, 2011) • Dreams Wander On – Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness (Robert Epstein, editor, Modern English Tanka Press, Baltimore, 2011) • seed packets anthology of flower haiku (Stanford Forrester, editor, bottle rockets press, Windsor, CT, 2010) • lanterns, a firefly anthology (Stanford Forrester, editor, bottle rockets press, Windsor, CT, 2007).
PRINT AND ONLINE LITERARY JOURNALS • A) Glimpse) Of) – (Athens, Greece), Asahi Shimbun newspaper (Tokyo), Autumn Moon Journal, Back Room Live !, Bones (UK), bottle rockets, brass bell, cattails, Circumference, Contemporary Haibun, Cornell University Mann Library's Daily Haiku, EOAGH, esque, Exit Strata, Fiera Lingue (Bolzano, Italy), Dispatches From the Poetry Wars, Hummingbird, is / let, Kō (Japan), Lilliput Review, Marsh Hawk Press Review, MayDay magazine, Modern Haiku, moon garlic (UK), Naugatuck River Review, On Barcelona, Otata, Otoliths, Passport, Poets for Living Waters, Presence (UK), Realities & Rituals of the Upside Down, roadrunner, South by Southeast, Spiral Orb, The Fortnightly Review, The Helix, The Operating System, The Solitary Plover, tinywords, Truck, Under the Bashō, Zen Space, Wales Haiku Journal, and Wang Pingʼs Kinship of Rivers.
PUBLISHED ESSAYS • RGBY Photographic Colour Theory, Pictures, Poems and Birds Who Sing by Ellen Carey and Donna Fleischer, Unlikely Journal Issue 8, University of Sydney, AU, May 2023 • An Altar of Sorts, May 2018, at my (small press) writing day, Rob McLennan, editor. • Earth Day, April 2014, on writing the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku Invitational Honourable Mention poem, “earth day” – at the editor's request • The Black Swans of Ellen Carey: Of Necessary Poetic Realities (2010, 2014), the essay to the exhibition catalogue “Let There Be Light: The Black Swans of Ellen Carey” published by Akus Gallery and Eastern Connecticut State University. The full catalogue with essay may be viewed at http://www.ellencareyphotography.com/ell... • Poetry and Money (#7): Donna Fleischer | A 3-Question Interview, A Sample Poem, and Book List Feature, part of the 2014 “Money and Poetry” series originated by poet Eileen R. Tabios. • The American Haibun by Donna Fleischer (Donna Fleischer © 2008, Lilliput Review, Don Wentworth, editor, 2011).
BROADSIDES OF POEMS BY DONNA FLEISCHER • The 2014 Under the Bashō International Haiku Contest First Prize haiku “late winter –” by Donna Fleischer embossed with depiction of classical Japanese poet Issa seated beneath the willow tree of which he wrote, and with seal. • The haiku “rail cars stacked with wood” by Donna Fleischer, ink-stamped and illustrated on recycled plastic by poet and artist Lily Brown, on January 17, 2011, in Athens, GA (pressing on press, Heidi Lynn Staples, editor). • The haiku “fish clouds birds” by Donna Fleischer, 11 in. x 17 in. four-color process, offset-printed on recycled, 100lb glossy stock (Connecticut River Coastal Conservation District, Inc., 2009). • The Useful Knowledge Press (New Haven, CT) limited edition of Donna’s haiku with wood block engravings by Allan Greenier, 2014, entitled HaiKube™.
OTHER • Donna’s poetry appeared monthly (2010 – 2015) online at the CT Environmental Headlines (Christopher Zurcher, editor). • Her ongoing blog word pond, begun in March 2010, is a curatorial content blog of modern and contemporary poetry, photography, other visual, lirerary, and performing arts, depth ecology, poetics (eco-, bio-, geo-), and news stories.
EDUCATION • Poetry and Communication Theory, Semiotics, Pragmatics, American and English Literature and History, Botany, and Ecology. University of Connecticut and University of Hartford. BA degree 1988. Ecology course, CT Talcott Mountain Science Center
LIVELIHOOD • master journeyman in pre-press, four-color process film stripping for offset sheetfed and web presses; transitioned to digital technologies in the textbook publishing industry as a Mac operator and proofreader. University of Hartford Biology and Chemistry Departments office coordinator. Fleischer is listed with The Haiku Foundation, that seeks to establish the importance of haiku "as a literary vehicle in the present and future": http://bit.ly/165V29f and The Living Haiku Anthology, published by the journal Under The Bashō (Don Baird, editor).
EDUCATION • University of Connecticut and University of Hartford, BA, English, 1988 • Albertus Magnus College, dropped out upon completion of two of four semesters in the MFA in Poetry program.
ARCHIVES • The poetry of Donna Fleischer is housed in the National Poetry Library, London; the Japanese Museum of Haiku Literature, Tokyo; Poets House, NYC; University of Massachusetts Amherst DuBois Library; the Canadian Haiku Society; California State Library Haiku Archives, Sacramento; The Haiku Foundation, Winchester, VA; The Haiku Foundation Digital Library; the Jim Kacian Archival Library; UB (the State University of New York at Buffalo); and the Central Public Library, Downtown Buffalo, NY.
