Walnut Creek, California
Susan Antolin fell in love with modern Japanese poetry in the late 1980s while living in Japan where she stumbled upon Machi Tawara’s Salad Anniversary in a Tokyo bookstore. Back in the U.S., after attending law school and becoming a mother to three children, she was delighted to discover a vibrant community of haiku poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined the Haiku Poets of Northern California in the early 2000s and has been immersed in haiku ever since, more recently codirecting the September 2025 Haiku North America conference in San Francisco. She has authored two books (Artichoke Season and The Years That Went Missing), is a coeditor together with Garry Gay and Carolyn Hall of The San Francisco Haiku Anthology: Volume Two (Spare Poems Press, 2024), and edits the journal Acorn.
In 2023, with the youngest of her three children graduated from college, she became a student again and attended the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at New York University with residencies in Paris. She lives in Walnut Creek, California where she enjoys hiking in the foothills of Mt. Diablo. She posts occasionally on Instagram @susan_antolin and on Substack @susanantolin. Her essay “Haiku Aesthetics: A Look at Understatement” can be found in Modern Haiku. Explore her website.
searching
for an empty frequency
apricot blossoms
2013 Haiku North America Conference Regional Anthology, Kath Abela Wilson, ed.
Independence Day
I struggle to free myself
from a wet swimsuit
Third Place, Gerald Brady Memorial Award, 2005
summer clouds
I pull the rope ladder up
behind me
Modern Haiku 45:1
where the chaperones
won’t see them—
bluebells
Mariposa #33
higher than the roof
the peace rose planted
three wars ago
Honorable Mention, 2008 San Francisco International Competition
punctured summer day
hours pooling
at my feet
Kingfisher #3
we call it a day—
the lid dancing
on a pot of artichokes
Kingfisher #2
the tablecloth
shaken over the lawn
starry night
Artichoke Season, Spare Poems Press, 2009
assigning my pain a number of autumn clouds
Frogpond 37:1
night sky
one of those stars might be
the reset button
Modern Haiku 46:2
curriculum vitae
the years
that went missing
Close to the Wind, Michael Dylan Welch and William Hart, eds., 2013
and so I agree
not to die before she does—
the sound of crickets
Second Place, 2008 San Francisco International Haiku Competition
it must have been the onion
that started it
evening rain
Wishbone Moon, Jacar Press, 2018, Roberta Beary, Ellen Compton, and Kala Ramesh, eds.
psych ward
out in the night air
my turn to fall apart
Wishbone Moon, Jacar Press, 2018, Roberta Beary, Ellen Compton, and Kala Ramesh, eds.
raining
only where the light falls
evening quiet
Hedgerow #134
after midnight—
each small noise that is not
her key in the lock
Mariposa #45
meanwhile in this world—
a thread of smoke
from the toaster
Upstate Dim Sum, 2022/1
night wind—
the sound of leaves
not letting go
Mariposa #46