John Brandi

John Brandi’s haiku practice spans four decades, a steadfast companion to his life as a writer, visual artist, and author of numerous books of poetry, travel essays, and haibun. A California native, his early forays into a landscape of desert, mountain, and seacoast opened a broader road for his travels around the Pacific Rim, India, Southeast Asia, and explorations of America’s desert southwest. His haiga (haiku paintings) have been exhibited at the New Mexico History Museum, Durango Arts Center, Roswell Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Public Library. In 2009 he gave the keynote addresses for the Haiku North America Conference in Ottawa, Canada, followed by the Punjabi Haiku Conference in India. In 2017 he received the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award, along with Noriko Kawasaki Martinez, for A House By Itself, translations of Masaoka Shiki’s haiku.