B e n   G a a

Ben Gaa is your friendly neighborhood haiku poet and host of Haiku Talk on YouTube. He's the author of two full length collections of haiku & senryu, One Breath (Spartan Press 2020), and the Touchstone Award winning Wishbones (Folded Word 2018), as well as four chapbooks, HIGH/COO award winner One Note Moon (Brooks Books 2023), Fiddle in the Floorboards (Yavanika Press 2018), the Pushcart nominated Wasp Shadows (Folded Word 2014), and Blowing on a Hot Soup Spoon (Poor Metaphor Design 2014) designed as a Jacobs Ladder. With over 1,000 haiku and senryu published in journals anthologies around the globe, he enjoys both giving and attending poetry readings, conducting haiku workshops, and being a part of the literary conversation. Ben is a graduate of the Knox College Creative Writing program and works as an IT Functional Analyst for MilliporeSigma (aka Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany). He currently lives in St. Louis, MO, with his rascal of a cat, Anastasia.

FULL LENGTH COLLECTIONS

"Having delighted us with the award-winning Wishbones, Ben Gaa continues to deliver exquisitely crafted haiku and senryu in One Breath. Gaa is a modern Midwestern flâneur, who is as likely to find an epiphany while drinking coffee or beer as while observing a sunset or a snowflake. Like the Japanese masters, he values the suchness of each experience, and merges humour and karumi with deep reflections on love and life which are wise but never didactic. His alert engagement of all five senses, combined with his expert writing and editing skills, results in work which is evocative, moving and inspirational."

Maeve O'Sullivan, haijin and poet who's fifth collection is forthcoming from Alba Publishing.

Video Book Review by Mike Rehling, editor of the senryu journal Failed Haiku.

Haiku Conversations: Ben Gaa's One Breath by Michael Dylan Welch

"This is an outstanding collection, especially because the author engages in deep thinking, close wondering, and caring about feelings. Like most of our best writers, he takes the time to notice significance in his life and capture that significance in the literary art of haiku." 

Randy Brooks, Frogpond 42:1 (2019)


“Moeller-Gaa writes with enviable command of the poetic possibilities inherent in haiku, playing with unexpected juxtapositions, reversals of causality, perceptual surprise, and more.”

Michele Root-Bernstein, Modern Haiku 50.2 (2019)

CHAPBOOKS

Ben Gaa's 4th Chapbook is one of three winners in the Brooks Books HIGH/COO Chapbook Series for 2023. The book can be bought individually or as part of a 3 Pack subscription. In this manuscript, Gaa continues to showcase his wide range of writing skills within this literary genre with a selection of 43 highly engaging pieces of work you'll be certain to enjoy reading after reading.

“One core aspect of haiku/senryu is that they trade on a collaboration with the reader. In that aspect, the best of them have an improvisational theme that is core. In this collection, Ben Moeller-Gaa has penned his work in a way that reminds me of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, or Muddy Waters. I was led immediately to humming my own tune to these fine poems, and subsequent readings took me in other unexpected directions. The fact that I felt like a participant in the pace and tone of the poems renders this collection FIVE STARS from me. A fun read and a great way to add smiles to your day.” 

Michael Rehling, Editor of Failed Haiku

In this Pushcart nominated collection of 20 haiku, Ben Moeller-Gaa takes us on a cyclical journey through what initially appears to be a typical Midwestern year. He notes the changing of the seasons and the effect those seasons have on human activity: snow to be shoveled, seeds to be planted, blooms to be weeded, fallen leaves to be raked. Ben’s haiku capture these everyday things, but with twists that reveal how the seemingly-everyday can send life spiraling forward through the circle of time.


~ Out of Print ~

Blowing on a Hot Soup Spoon

Haiku by Ben Gaa, Illustrated by Ron Isom, Book Design by Erin Wiles of poor metaphor design (2014)

In this limited edition, hand made chapbook, bound as a Jacob's Ladder, we have a collection of 20 haiku by Ben Moeller-Gaa that move through the seasons with poignancy, precision, and depth perception. Each poem is carefully illustrated with symbols that speak both to the haiku as well as to each other, making the bound collection a rich tapestry of language ripe for enjoyment. The unique Jacob's Ladder binding technique serves the books title well, giving the book literal movement as it figuratively moves through time.


~ Sold Out ~

Sample Poems



steeping tea

the time it takes to lose a street

to snow



weekday morning

pulling my mood

off a hanger


what she said

driving home

the sound of blinkers


watching my dad

look at his dad

in a coffin



broken branches

feeding my lonliness

to the fire


more sample poems