A Rockford bookstore entered the publishing world more than a year ago. Its third project is a book of haiku, a type of Japanese poetry, by area poets. It was released last month.
Dave Pedersen is the owner of Maze Books, which published the book. He said Rockford needed an anthology like this.
“We’ve got everybody from senior citizens to students to professors,” he said, “to people who work in factories in the book. So, it's a nice gathering of all sorts of perspectives about Rockford.”
Pedersen said the book was scheduled to be released earlier last year but then he found out "The Rockford Anthology" that was edited by Rachel León was coming out.
“I told her about 'Rockford Haiku', and she goes, ‘that's crazy, because I'm working on this anthology.' So, I was like, 'oh my goodness, what are we going to do?’ So, I stepped back and were working on ‘Cold Comfort' and Don Heneghan stuff, and just kind of took my time with it so that '[The] Rockford Anthology' could get, you know, the light that it needed, and it deserved.”
A haiku has three lines. The first and third lines must have five syllables: the middle one, seven. Pedersen said counting syllables was nerve-racking.
“Here's the kind of cool thing about syllables in Rockford, the winding river, which is five syllables,” he explained. “How many haiku have I got with the winding river? I have no idea. I lost count. We got over 200 submissions.”
Nearly 70 poets contributed to the book.
Pedersen said there were two poets’ haiku that weren’t included based on something he overlooked. One was Lori Beach-Grass, and the other one was a student.
"Rockford Haiku" is available at the bookstore.
