Susan Antolin

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