Michael Dylan Welch is passionate about poetry, especially haiku, which he has been writing since 1976 and teaching since about 1990. He has won first place in numerous poetry contests, and has had his haiku, senryu, tanka, and longer poetry published in at least fifteen languages in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including two Norton anthologies. He edited the quarterly haiku journal Woodnotes from 1989 to 1997, and more recently edited Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem. Michael is a contributing editor to both Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society and Juxtapositions: The Journal of Haiku Poetics and Culture, and is a founding associate of The Haiku Foundation. In 2003 and 2004, he was a volunteer editor for the Poets Against the War site, and in 2004 and 2005, he founded and directed the Poets in the Park conference. He is also editor and publisher of Press Here, which has published many award-winning haiku and tanka books since 1989. In 1991 he cofounded the Haiku North America conference, now a nonprofit corporation of which he is a director. In 1996 he cofounded the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, the world’s largest public haiku archive outside Japan, and currently serves on its advisory board and as webmaster for its website. In 2000, he founded the Tanka Society of America, also serving as its president for five years. Michael is currently first vice president of the Haiku Society of America, and is past coordinator of the Haiku Northwest group and a current board member of both the Washington Poets Association (for which he has been editor of Cascade) and the Redmond Association of Spokenword (for which he serves as reading series curator). He also runs the monthly SoulFood Poetry Night in Redmond, Washington (since 2006), and coedited, from January 2008 to March 2010, with Emiko Miyashita, a monthly haiku column in Asahi Weekly, a Japanese newspaper. In 2010, he was also selected for Seattle’s Jack Straw Writers Program. In 2010, Michael also created NaHaiWriMo, or National Haiku Writing Month, which was first held in February of 2011 (the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry)—NaHaiWriMo also has a very active Facebook page. In March of 2012, the United States Postal Service printed 150,000,000 cherry blossom stamps featuring one of his waka (tanka) translations on the back.

        Michael’s most recent books include Furoshiki (Tokyo: PIE Books, 2011),  Standing Still (Sammamish, Washington: Press Here, 2011), Tidepools: Haiku On Gabriola (Gabriola, British Columbia: Pacific-Rim Publishers, 2011), Bonsai (Tokyo: PIE Books, 2011), Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku by a Bunch of Our Friends (Sammamish, Washington: Press Here, 2010), Noh (Tokyo: PIE Books, 2010), For a Moment (Pointe Claire, Quebec: King’s Road Press, 2009) and 100 Poets: Passions of the Imperial Court (Tokyo: PIE Books, 2008). The latter book, a 400-page art book with photographs, is a cotranslation with Emiko Miyashita of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a 13th-century collection of Japanese waka poems compiled by Fujiwara no Teika. His translation on the back of a United States postage stamp came from this book. Michael has an MA in English, works as a technical writer and editor, and has also edited more than 200 trade books on subjects as diverse as jazz, soldering, herbal medicine, memoir, graphic design, plywood manufacturing, children’s literature, CAD design, computer animation, business management, computer games, network security, and digital photography. Examples of recent trade books he's edited are Fight for Your Long Day, a 2010 novel by Alex Kudera (also available as an audiobook from Iambik); Frontline Profit Machine, by Ziad Y. Khoury, a 2009 #1 bestseller for both USA Today and Amazon business books, and #7 bestseller for Business Week; and two memoirs by Charles Lovett, Love Ruth: A Son’s Memoir and Sparrow Through the Hall. Michael was born in Watford, England (he’s a British subject), and grew up in England, Ghana, Australia, and Canada (he added Canadian citizenship as a teenager), travels frequently to Japan (his wife is Japanese), and now lives with his wife and two ruly children in Sammamish, Washington.

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See also 25 Random Things About Me, 50 Questions, and the Interviews page. See some of Michael’s photographs, mostly of haiku-related events, at Michael Dylan Welch Photo Gallery (on Picasa). Michael has also been known for years as Captain Haiku. +