I’m thrilled to announce the publication of this full-length collection by my favorite haiku poet and haibunista, Roberta Beary, Touchstone Award-winning poet and long-time haibun editor at Modern Haiku. This book features 80 haibun selected by yours truly, in collaboration with the author, from poems written over a 20-year period (2004 through 2024).

With Lew Watts and Rich Youmans, Beary is co-author of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023).

For a comprehensive list of additional books and publications, see Roberta Beary at Poets&Writers.

Crazy Bitches by Roberta Beary was released by MacQ on 8 March 2025.

Available through booksellers such as Bookshop.org and Amazon UK

Cover art: Widow with Shawl © by artist Kevin Beary. All rights reserved.

Praise for Crazy Bitches:

I’ve come to expect nothing less than perfection from Roberta Beary, and Crazy Bitches: selected haibun does not disappoint. Beary is a master of the form and her haibun are deceptively simple; it takes the highest level of craft to make them seem so. Beary tackles the hard issues, as in “On a Day Like Any Other,” where the small, pink-haired boy is ambushed by bullies, captured on video. “A footprint marks his face. His white shirt is stained with blood. But the Blessed Heart insignia on his backpack is untouched.” Beary’s sense of irony is unmatched. I love this book.

—Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Triggered, Brazen, Junkie Wife, and Erotic

Beary gets to the root of many different traumas, which are made more accessible thanks to her mastery of the power of the haibun form. The subtlety of their haiku allows ample space for readers to thread the needle of the story themselves. That balance of interweaving a resonant narrative while allowing readers to have the satisfaction of making the connections themselves is perhaps the most difficult tightrope walk of all—when it comes to crafting excellent poetry. Beary manages an impressive feat—by nestling the audience right alongside the various voices of the poems as the haiku allow for the space for the readers to make their own connections.

—Katie Dozier Green, creator of The Poetry Space_, author of Watering Can, co-author of Hot Pink Moon: A Crown of Haibun, and associate editor for Rattle

This collection of eighty haibun is a triumph. Those new to haibun are in for a treat, and those experienced with Roberta Beary’s work will gasp and smile with each turned page. Yes, Beary, longtime haibun editor at Modern Haiku, writes brilliant haibun. They have famously written about “The Holy Trinity of Haibun”: a title that draws the reader in, prose that is short and engaging, and (one or more) haiku that reflect or expand the prose. Her haibun are exemplars of this, and they sizzle. And there’s more. Innovative of form, approach, even narrative type, Beary’s haibun effortlessly shift from lyrical to the tightest, bitingly sparse flash. And all this through twenty years of acerbic, ironic, candid, and forceful writing with a voice that’s consistent and unique.

—Lew Watts, haibun co-editor for Frogpond, and author of Eira, a memoir in haibun form and recipient in 2023 of a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award

(Expanded reviews by Katie Dozier Green and Lew Watts will appear in Issue 27 of MacQueen’s Quinterly, which is scheduled to launch in two weeks, on or before 24 March.)

Three Excerpts from Crazy Bitches:

Dad Says

It’s a phase that some boys go through but most don’t. Most don’t wear their sister’s lipstick and keep it a secret. A secret my brother knows is that I like kissing my best friend Esme who dresses in boy clothes. My best friend Esme who dresses in boy clothes is what Dad calls a phase some girls go through but most don’t.

upside down
day
moon rising

—First published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 20, September 2023); reprinted in upside down: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2023 (Red Moon Press, 2024) and Pride Poems 2024

Genetics

Your eyes are big and round like your father’s 
but while his are the color of the Irish Sea 
yours are the color of the muddy fields 
on my father’s land 
fit only for the peasants who worked them.

abortion day
a shadow flutters
the fish tank

—First published in Rattle #47 (Spring 2015), Tribute to Japanese Forms, and nominated by Rattle in 2016 for the Pushcart Prize; reprinted in galaxy of dust: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2015 (Red Moon Press, 2016)

The Two Fathers

hometown visit sunlight haloes a dusty pew

I recite my brief litany of sins. Spilled milk on my sister’s essay. Stole her pocket change. Said she wasn’t home when some boy called. The priest grants me absolution. Then opens a newspaper. I linger on the other side of the grille. I want to tell him about my father. The priest sighs, licks the tip of his pencil and marks the paper. He repeats this procedure several times. At last he looks up. Under the weak light of confined space, he blesses me. Then makes a dismissive gesture with both hands. His paper falls against the lit screen. Yesterday’s horse races. Each line slashed with a row of x’s. The priest’s feral eyes identical to my father’s. Home after a day at the track, pockets empty, breath laced with whiskey. I open the door of the confessional. Meander to the Lady Chapel. Kneel on red velvet. Fold my hands. Make a vow. Never again will I confess my sins. Outside I see my sister, smoking. She disengages from a group of boys. Hands one her cigarette. We take the long way back. Neither of us mentions who is waiting for us.

votive candle—
veined hands spark
a prayer for the dead

—First published in The Haibun Journal (Issue 2:2, 2020); reprinted in Contemporary Haibun 16 anthology (Red Moon Press, 2021)