Marlene Mountain (née Morelock; December 11, 1939 – March 15, 2018), also known as Marlene Morelock Wills, was an American poet, artist, and activist. She wrote many English-language haiku and concrete poems. She was the 2014-2015 honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento. ''Femku Magazine'' has a haiku contest named after Mountain.

Biography

Mountain was born in

Ada, Oklahoma Ada is a city in and the county seat of Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 16,481 at the 2020 United States Census. The city was named for Ada Reed, the daughter of an early settler, and was inc ...

. She earned a BFA from the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...

in painting and an MA in painting from the

University of North Dakota The University of North Dakota (also known as UND or North Dakota) is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of N ...

. She began writing haiku in 1968. After she married her husband, John Wills, she moved with him to east Tennessee.

Writing

She wrote several one-line haiku and was also known for writing visual haiku (short poems that had visual effects like that of concrete poetry), which she referred to as "dadaku" or "unaloud haiku" and are sometimes also called "eye-ku".

Personal life

She was married to John Wills, another haiku poet. They later divorced.

Bibliography

*
the old tin roof
', 1976, self-published * ''Pissed off poems ; and Cross words'', 1986 * ''cur*rent'' (with Francine Porad), Vandina Press, 1998 * ''probably: 'real' renga sorta'' (with Francine Porad), Vandina Press, 2002 *
one-line twos
' (with Kala Ramesh), ''Bones'', 2015

References

External links