Category Archives: Tom Clausen biographical info

word thursday reading

17 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by in haiku, Readings, senryu, Tom Clausen biographical info

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WORD THURSDAYS FEATURING TOM CLAUSEN AND CHRISTINA M. RAU

MAY 24, 2018 @ 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Tom Clausen (Ithaca, NY) is a life-long Ithacan living in the same house he grew up in.  He became interested in haiku and related short forms of poetry in the late 1980s after reading an article about naturalist Ruth Yarrow, profiling her haiku. There was instant recognition that haiku was a form that might help with his tendency with wordiness, repetition, and overstatement. He has been reading and trying to write haiku, senryu, tanka, and haibun since then. Tom is the curator of a daily haiku feature, online, at Mann Library, Cornell University where he worked for more than 35 years before retiring in 2013. In 2003, Tom was invited to join the Route 9 Haiku group that formed in 2001. The group publishes a twice-yearly journal, Dim Sum, featuring selected work by members John Stevenson, Hilary Tann, Yu Chang, Tom Clausen and a guest poet as well as a couple of haiga by Romanian artist  and poet Ion Codrescu. Tom has several books published including Growing Late and Homework from Snap Shot Press in UK and most recently Laughing To Myself from Free Food Press. Tom enjoys walking, biking, photography and simply going about observing and documenting moments, beauty and wabi sabi all around us. Website: www.tomclausen.com.

Laughing To Myself

16 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in Book reviews, haiku, Laughing To Myself, Published Poems, senryu, Tom Clausen biographical info

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Laughing To Myself

A collection of haiku and senryu by Tom Clausen, a favorite poet of many readers of haiku. Tom has been writing haiku for over twenty years and has enchanted readers with his very personal outlook on family, nature and living in this modern world. Tom opens his heart so that those who read his poems not only feel like they know him, but because his poems touch a universal chord readers also feel like they know themselves a bit better too.

before sleep
 laughing to myself
           at myself

Since 1989, when Tom Clausen first came onto the haiku scene, he has been in the forefront of English language haiku, senryu, haibun and tanka.  Tom was a pioneer in the haiku movement that let haiku not only roam through the natural world, but let it into our cities, homes, and all other aspects of our modern world. No other haiku poet has so openly let the reader into his life and into his heart.  Tom, while retaining his individual voice,  manages to convey the aspiration and angst of all of us who live in this modern world and does so with a wry and whimsical smile. This collection which spans the entire 24 years of Tom’s insightful, honest and often humorous poetry will give those who know Tom’s work a chance to revisit old favorites and find gems they might haves missed and give those less familiar with Tom’s work a chance to see why he is one of the most influential haiku and senryu poets of his generation.

bitter wind-
we circle our candles
for peace


Review by Alan Summers

haibun

16 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in haibun, Tom Clausen biographical info

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about haibun :

“Whether we think of our life as special or not, in the flow of experience come special moments that punctuate our sensibility and memory. Haibun are records and renderings of our passage through life, and an attempt to distill the highlights of our very diverse experiences. The poem that typically concludes the haibun ought to reflect the heart of our inner understanding of outward experience.”



Tom Clausen was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1951 and continues to be a resident of this isolated finger lakes college town. Today, Tom shares the same house he grew up in with Berta and their two children, Casey and Emma. Tom has worked for more than twenty years at Cornell University in the Mann Library where he coordinates the staff and student assistants in the document services–circulation department. Tom graduated from Cornell in 1973 and after several years of bicycle trip adventures, he settled back where he started. His books include Autumn Wind in the Cracks, Unraked Leaves, and Standing Here (1994, 1995, 1998; all self-published) and A Work of Love (Tiny Poems Press, 1997).