MEET TY HADMAN

Late-breaking news! Ty just won First Place in The First American Haiku Contest. Check it out! And Congratulations, Ty!

I started studying Japanese culture and religion in 1964. I was
interested in rock gardens, the tea ceremony, Japanese literature, Zen, woodblock prints, kite-flying, and just about anything Japanese. I was first introduced to haiku the same year when I read some of the Peter Pauper Press Japanese haiku translations, but didn't really start becoming interested in haiku until 1966 when I met a barber at an informal social gathering of artists in the Silverlake District in Los Angeles. This barber knew about 50 haiku by heart. His haiku commentaries sparked interest and many lively discussions. I've been hooked on haiku ever since.

I was sent to Vietnam in 1968. I kept a personal diary which I
used later to write some of my first haiku. After the war I was admitted into a Hindu monastery in Canada. I was a monk for two full years. I then became a wanderer, hitchhiking in all four cardinal directions throughout the United States, Canada, and
Mexico, hopping freight trains, begging door-to-door, staying with friends or as a guest on communes, drifting from town to town, state to state, odd job to odd job, working as a migrant worker on farms and ranches, sometimes ending up in the city accepting day labor or factory work and then moving on again. I finally settled down for awhile in the San Francisco Bay area
from 1980-1984. I began submitting my haiku for publication in 1977. My haiku and haiku translations have been published and written about in numerous haiku magazines, newspapers, short poetry journals, chapbooks, anthologies, etc. throughout the United States and in Canada, Japan, Australia, England, Poland, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.

Starting in 1987 I relocated to Mexico to continue my research on
medicinal plants and the history of Hispanic haiku. I was employed as an English and English Literature teacher. I relocated to Peru to get married in 1993 where I am presently living in a poor tiny fishing village, Puerto Eten, with my wife and daughter in the north of Peru.

A sample of some of my haiku:

WINTER HITCHHIKING
Ty Hadman

in my patched clothes
homeless and unemployed
ready for winter!

winter approaching;
hoboes huddled together
around the campfire

winter wandering;
cup after cup of hot coffee
to go

homeless
hitchhiking
here & there

homeless and hungry
the cold, cold rain
all night long

behind bare bushes:
my frozen fingers unable
to unzip my fly

waking up
with winter
inside me

first snow:
my pockets
are empty

winter poverty;
I made a new friend
at the blood bank

selling our blood
for a few dollars per pint
winter deepens

with our blood money
we share a fifth
of fine red wine

lost in a labyrinth of streets
late at night
a stray dog following me . . .

winter over but still cold
standing and waiting all alone
on a lonesome highway

at the crack of dawn
over and under the bridge
swift swallows swoop

the old backpack
patched and ready to go
spring traveling

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