B e n G a a

Ben Gaa is your friendly neighborhood haiku poet. 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 three chapbooks, the Pushcart nominated Wasp Shadows (Folded Word 2014), Blowing on a Hot Soup Spoon (Poor Metaphor Design 2014) and Fiddle in the Floorboards (Yavanika Press 2018). Widely 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). He currently lives in St. Louis, MO, with his rascal of a cat, Anastasia.

One Breath

Spartan Press 2020

"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.

Wishbones

Folded Word 2018 - Touchstone Award Winner

"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)