Landmarks is a collection of 64 of Ray Rasmussen's haibun that have appeared in a number of journals including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, A Hundred Gourds, Bottle Rockets and Blithe Spirit.
Themes include later-in-life romance, memories of childhood, wilderness adventures, retirement and aging, and philosophical musings.
Ray is haibun editor of Haibun Today and technical editor of Contemporary Haibun Online. His haibun have been carried in numerous anthologies including Contemporary Haibun Online, The Red Moon Anthology, Journeys 2014 and the two anthologies produced by the British Haiku Society.
Ferris Gilli, Associate Editor of The Heron's Nest haiku journal, comments:
"LANDMARKS: A Haibun Collection by Ray Rasmussen is not only beautiful to look at and has a pleasing typeset, it is one of the best books in a haiku-related genre that I've ever read. Rasmussen evokes a wide range of emotions with these haibun. I've read a number of them so many times they have become old friends. They've also shown me how I can sharpen my own haibun."
Jeffrey Woodward, Editor, Haibun Today comments:
The haibun of Ray Rasmussen revel in close observation and personal experience. They take for their inspiration the everyday person, place or thing and these subjects commonly are ones with which their author shares an intimate relationship.
Like the inuksuk that graces the cover of Landmarks, Rasmussen's haibun seem constructed of whatever stones lie near at hand, whatever materials he can appropriate from his immediate environs and, in doing so, they fashion a chronicle of his life's journey, part wilderness travel, part interior odyssey.
Like the inuksuk, these haibun are markers in the otherwise normal landscapes of all of our lives. They are testimonials that "someone was here" before and offer assurances, to the reader, that he is on the right path.
- Jeffrey Woodward, Author of
Evening in the Plaza and
Another Garden, and Editor of
Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose and of
Haibun Today.
Ray Rasmussen lives at times in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and at times in Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada.
He has been composing haibun since the late 90s and his work appears regularly in a variety of international journals. Many of his haibun have been included poetry anthologies.
Currently, he serves as haibun editor for the online journal Haibun Today. In the past he's served as the haibun editor of A Hundred Gourds, The World Haiku Review, Simply Haiku and Notes from the Gean.
When he's not busy writing and editing, he spends a good deal of his time hiking, canoeing and photographing wilderness places, including Alberta's Willmore Wilderness Park and Jasper National Park, Utah's Canyonlands National Park and Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park.
In a previous life, Ray was a professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Management and Organization, the TransAlta Professor of Environmental Policy, and the Director of the Environmental Research and Studies Centre at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
Ray provides online coaching for writers in haibun composition. He can be reached at: ray@raysweb.net
