Honorary Curator Lenard D. Moore
Lenard D. Moore
Honorary Curator, 2020-2021
Appointment Announcement
The American Haiku Archives advisory board is pleased to announce the appointment of Lenard D. Moore as the 2020–2021 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento. This honor recognizes his decades of contributions to haiku literature and leadership, and his integration of haiku into his work in longer poetry and teaching.
In addition, we are pleased to celebrate this appointment with a special Zoom reading on Sunday, August 2, 2020, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Pacific time (4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern time).
This free online event, the first in the history of the American Haiku Archives, will include the following activities:
- Welcome, by Michael Dylan Welch
- Haiku reading by members of the American Haiku Archives Advisory Board
- Greetings from the California State Library
- Introduction of the 2020–21 AHA Honorary Curator, by Ce Rosenow
- Haiku reading by Lenard D. Moore
- PowerPoint presentation on the history of the American Haiku Archives and its previous honorary curators, by Michael Dylan Welch
- Closing Q&A session and socializing
The American Haiku Archives is pleased to share a video on YouTube from this event. This video, https://youtu.be/glBueeCFXW0, celebrates Lenard D. Moore as the 2020-21 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives.
Lenard D. Moore is a poet, anthologist, founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective, and U.S. Army veteran. He was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina and is author of A Temple Looming (WordTech Editions, 2008), Desert Storm: A Brief History (Los Hombres Press, 1993), Forever Home (St. Andrews College Press, 1992), The Open Eye (North Carolina Haiku Society Press, 1985; Mountains & Rivers Press, 2015), and The Geography of Jazz (Mountains & Rivers Press, 2018; Blair Publishers, 2020), among other books. He is the editor of One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku (Unicorn Press, 2017), All the Songs We Sing: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective (Blair Publishers, 2020), and other books. His haiku chapbook, Gathering at the Crossroads (Red Moon Press, 2003), is a collaboration with photographer and Black Arts Movement poet Eugene B. Redmond. Moore also cofounded the Washington Street Writers Group. He is former president of Haiku Society of America (2008 and 2009) and longtime executive chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society (since 1994).
He earned his BA in liberal studies with a minor in English from Shaw University. He also earned his MA in English and African-American literature from North Carolina A&T State University.
His poems have appeared in Callaloo, African American Review, Agni, Artful Dodge, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Blues Revue Quarterly, Blues Access, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and elsewhere. His poems have also appeared in textbooks and in more than one hundred anthologies, including Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (Norton, 2013), The Haiku Anthology (Norton, 1999), Catch the Fire!!!: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry (Riverhead, 1998), Spirit & Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (Syracuse University Press, 1997), and Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry (Penguin USA/Mentor, 1997).
Moore has performed his poetry with the jazz combo R.S.V.P., the Joel Dias-Porter Quintet, the Mount Olive College Symphonic Band and Jazz Band, the Matt Kendrick Trio, the Dennis Klopfer Jazz Trio, and with other jazz artists such as Vijay Iyer, J. D. Parran, Mark Deutsch, Chris Sullivan, and James Dallas.
Moore is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 North Carolina Black History Month Honoree presented by Governor Roy Cooper, the North Carolina Award for Literature (2014), the Eastern North Carolina Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet award (2009 and 2008), the Raleigh Medal of the Arts for lifetime achievement (2008), the Sam Ragan Award in Fine Arts (2006), Tokyo’s Museum of Haiku Literature Award (2003, 1994, and 1983), the Tar Heel of the Week Award (1998), the Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award (1997), and the Indies Arts Award (1996). He has also won first prize in the 1992 Mainichi International Haiku Contest and won a 2018 Kanterman Merit Book Award for best anthology from the Haiku Society of America for One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku.
Moore has taught at Enloe High School, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina State University, Shaw University, and the University of Mount Olive. He has taught haiku and other forms of poetry to students in schools, colleges, and universities for decades. He also serves on boards of literary organizations and editorial boards of literary magazines and publishers.
We are pleased to celebrate Lenard D. Moore, and to bestow this honor from the American Haiku Archives, which seeks to preserve and promote haiku and related poetry throughout the North American continent. The following are three of Lenard’s poems:
quiet rain
a Coltrane tune I know
on the radio
hot afternoon
the squeak of my hands
on my daughter’s coffin
a black soldier
breathing into a saxophone
hot desert wind
The American Haiku Archives, which includes the Haiku Society of America archives, is the largest public collection of haiku materials outside Japan. Each year since the archives were established on July 12, 1996, the AHA advisory board, currently chaired together by Randy Brooks, Garry Gay, and Michael Dylan Welch, appoints a new honorary curator (an idea suggested by the former California state librarian, Dr. Kevin Starr). Past curators, in order starting from the first year, have been Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Jerry Kilbride, Cor van den Heuvel, Robert Spiess, Lorraine Ellis Harr, Leroy Kanterman, William J. Higginson, Makoto Ueda, Francine Porad, Hiroaki Sato, H. F. Noyes, George Swede, Stephen Addiss, Gary Snyder, Jerry Ball, LeRoy Gorman, Charles Trumbull, Marlene Mountain, Ruth Yarrow, Haruo Shirane, Patricia Donegan, John Stevenson, and Alexis Rotella.
The AHA advisory board is delighted to pay tribute to Lenard D. Moore as the twenty-fourth honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives. To search the collections of the American Haiku Archives online, please visit http://www.library.ca.gov/. For information on donating material to the archives, or other information about its history and past honorary curators, please visit the American Haiku Archives website at www.americanhaikuarchives.org.
~Michael Dylan Welch, American Haiku Archives Advisory Board Co-chair
Selected Haiku
quiet rain
a Coltrane tune I know
on the radio
hot afternoon
the squeak of my hands
on my daughter’s coffin
a black soldier
breathing into a saxophone
hot desert wind
riff
of radio jazz . . .
wren
her light breathing . . .
the Easter lilies opening
in the blue vase
morning moon
the tornado’s aftermath
in the trailer park
duskfall . . .
reading my quilt poem
in the workshop
midday heat
soldiers on both sides
roll up their sleeves
sun plaza:
one million shadows darken
foot by foot
bobbing and bobbing
on the jazz club wall—
the bassist’s shadow
rifle rounds ended—
a flying squirrel leaps
from the jungle vines
blackened wood
engulfs scattered oak roots—
still this crossroads
serene evening—
black woman’s high heels knock
across hardwood floor
lingering clouds . . .
the food truck pulls away
from the green light
each blueberry
gets sweeter and sweeter—
her blue-stained lips
Books by Lenard D. Moore
Poetry
Poems of Love and Understanding, Carlton Press, 1982
The Open Eye, North Carolina Haiku Society, 1985, Mountain & Rivers Press, 2015 (second edition)
Forever Home, St. Andrews Press, 1992
Desert Storm: A Brief History, Los Hombres Press, 1993
Gathering at the Crossroads: The Million Man March, with photography by Eugene B. Redmond, Red Moon Press, 2003
A Temple Looming, WorldTech Editions, 2008
The Geography of Jazz, Mountain & Rivers Press, 2018, Blair, 2020 (second edition)
Editor:
Wild Again: Selected Haiku of Nina Wicker, coedited with Dave Russo and Jim Kacian, Red Moon Press, 2005
Beneath the Willow Tree: Poems from the North Caroline Haiku Society, Rosenberry Books, 2007
Dandelion Wind: 2007 Haiku North America Anthology, coedited with Michael Dylan Welch, Press Here, 2008
In the Night Shallows: Selected Haiku of Rebecca Ball Rust, coedited with Dave Russo, Rosenberry Books, 2009
The Stone House: An Anthology of Haiku from Bolin Brooks Farm, coedited with Dave Russo, Rosenberry Books, 2012
7, coedited with Roberta Beary, Jacar Press, 2013
Learning to See the Truth, coedited with Dave Russo, Rosenberry Books, 2014
One Window’s Light, Unicorn Press, 2017
All the Songs We Sing, Blair Press, 2020
Anthology Inclusions:
Spirit & Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Syracuse University Press, 1997
Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry, Penguin USA/Mentor, 1997
Catch the Fire!!!: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry, Riverhead Trade Editions, 1998
The Haiku Anthology, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999
Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013
Essays, Interviews & Feature Stories About Lenard D. Moore
Alexander, Francis W. “Black Haiku Pioneer, Lenard D. Moore.” Xavier Review 18.2 (1998): 63-67.
Bremer, Krista. “Three Lines, One Life.” Our State: Celebrating North Carolina. April 29, 2019.
Carruth, Kelly. “Through the Eye of a Mountain: A Look at the Haiku Works of Lenard D. Moore.” Millikin University Haiku, (2003).
Church, L. Teresa. “On being and becoming a writer: interview with Lenard D. Moore.” Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 10, no. 2, 2009, p. 129+. Gale Literature Resource Center.
Hodges, Cory. “Contemporary Haiku Author, Lenard D. Moore.” Millikin University Haiku, (2005).
Kim, Heejung. “The Other American Poetry and Modernist Poetics: Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Sonia Sanchez, James Emanuel, and Lenard Moore.” Kent State University, 2018. Dissertation. 212 pages.
Kiuchi, Toru. “African American Aesthetic Tradition in Lenard D. Moore’s Haiku.” African American Haiku: Cultural Visions, 147-161. Jackson, MS; University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Kiuchi, Toru. “Creating African American Haiku Form: Lenard D. Moore's Poetic Artistry.” Journal of Ethnic American Literature 1 (2011): 153-165.
Major, Devorah. “Lenard D. Moore – Poet, Professor, Haiku Master.” Blog interview.
Michaels, Will and Frank Stasio. “Mastering the Art of Haiku: Meet North Carolina Poet Lenard D. Moore.” Chapel Hill, NC: WUNC, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, (April 25, 2016). [Audio interview.]
Rosenow, Ce. “Sequences of Events: African American Communal Narratives in the Haiku of Lenard D. Moore.” African American Haiku: Cultural Visions, 162-179. Jackson, MS; University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Smith McKoy, Sheila. “Contextualizing Renso and Sankofa: A Cultural and Critical Exploration of Lenard D. Moore’s Haiku.” African American Haiku: Cultural Visions, 180-190. Jackson, MS; University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Web Links
Moore, Lenard D. Books by Moore available at Amazon.
Moore, Lenard D. “Deep in the Woods: The Haiku Journey.” Frogpond 31.2, (2008): 26-27.
Moore, Lenard D. Featured author for Mann Library's Daily Haiku, November 2009.
Moore, Lenard D. “Meet HSA Member - Lenard D. Moore.”
Moore, Lenard E. "New to Haiku: Advice for Beginners" The Haiku Foundation, August 2023.
Moore, Lenard D. Selected Haiku. North Carolina Haiku Society.
Moore, Lenard D. Wikepedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenard_Moore.
Moore, Lenard D. Poetry Reading Transcript. Xavier Literary Reading Series.
Multimedia
Beaver, Donna and Alan Pizzarelli, Hosts. "African American Haiku" Haiku Chronicles, Episode 46, August 30, 2020. [audio]
Caldwell, J., Editor and Videographer. “Haiku in the Rain - June 22, 2020” Nasher Museum, Durham, North Carolina. [video]
Milwaukee PBS - Black Noveau Program 2226 - Haiku & Saxaphone reading. [video]
Moore, Lenard D. "A Black Man Tells His Son the Whole Story." Southern Cultures, October 1, 2015. [video]
Moore, Lenard D. “Your Rocking, Clapping Self.” The A440 Podcast. [audio]
Moore, Lenard D. “The Haiku Foundation Interviews: Lenard D. Moore.” Winchester, VA: The Haiku Foundation, 2013. [video]
Moore, Lenard D. “Lenard D. Moore - Haiku 1” Haiku Society of America Quarterly Meeting, 2008. [video]
NPR Coastline Podcast. Carolina African American Writers Collective. WHQR Wilminton, NC. 2020. [audio]
“2014 North Carolina Award for Public Literature: Lenard D. Moore.” North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. [video]
Universtiy of Mount Olive Jazz Band Featuring Lenard D. Moore, “Watermelon Man” 2017. [video]
