Embedded Files
First published in the Haiku Society of America newsletter in 2003 [need to add issue number or month]. This text used to be available on the HSA website, now available on the Internet Archive. The postscript presents her obituary that appeared on the Legacy website on 15 March 2023.
Dear All,
I’m sad to report that Canadian haiku poet anne mckay has passed away. She was born in April of 1932 in Ottawa, Ontario, and died March 4, 2003 (aged 70), apparently peacefully, in her studio apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.
She published twenty books (I believe all or most of them of haiku), and was well known for her extensive work in writing linked poetry, using one-liner verses nearly exclusively. Her poetry had a strong and inimitable voice, and she was marvelously inventive with her words and images. Her brief poetry often flirted at the edges of haiku, yet somehow retained its connection to this genre, demonstrating part of the range that is possible with haiku. anne had three children [Christopher, Victoria, and Trevor], and requested that she have no funeral.
For those who knew anne through correspondence or from meeting this feisty short-statured woman in person, or knew her from her books or from poems in journals, she will definitely be missed. For those of you who did not know her or her work, I encourage you to seek it out. Most of her books were published by Hal Roth’s Wind Chimes Press, and a "best of" selection was published by Cacanadadada Press in British Columbia. You can read a selection of her poetry (with French translations) at http://pages.infinit.net/haiku/canangl.htm#mckay [link no longer works; see https://web.archive.org/web/20080510144018/http://pages.infinit.net/haiku/canangl.htm#mckay].
—Michael Welch
Postscript
Postscript
The following obituary appeared on the Legacy website on 15 March 2003.
Anne McKay, born April 29, 1932 in Ottawa, passed on peacefully in her Vancouver Studio on Tuesday, March 4, 2003. Anne is survived by her children: son, Christopher; daughter, Victoria; son, Trevor; grandson Brook and ex-husband Doug. Anne’s life was her poetry, publishing 20 books, garnering numerous awards in Canada, the United States and the Eri Nakamura award, Museum of Haiku Literature award and JAL anthology award from Japan, the home of Haiku. Anne was a magician with words, each word carefully selected, each poem meticulously sculpted until she had achieved a perfect harmony. Anne shared her life with writing partners around the world, never turning away an offer to renga with the many who had discovered her work. From her small studio in Vancouver she stayed in touch with the world never knowing what the next mail delivery would bring. Anyone who wrote with Anne knows the excitement she brought to the process, gently, gently directing the flow of the work—she was the craftsman. Many a time, as she received a new link, her eyes would light up and she would say “Don’t I have fun?” Anne did have fun taking the rules then bending, twisting but never breaking them, until the words danced to her music. “for me making poems is my way of being alive . . . a kind of singing.” Anne has requested that there be no funeral service.
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