Randy and Shirley Brooks Photo

About Us

Brooks Books Haiku celebrates English language haiku by promoting and publishing in a variety of media. Our goal is to share our joy of the art of reading and writing haiku with as many people as possible.

We celebrate the individual haiku through the publication of our little chapbook-size magazine, Mayfly, which features only 15 haiku per issue. For severl years we celebrated the art of haiga by commissioning an original haiga by Lidia Rozmus for the cover of each issue of Mayfly magazine. Now our daughter, Jessica Brooks, creates original paintings and art featuring a haiku for each cover.

We celebrate lifetime contributions of haiku writers by publishing clothbound and trade paperback books of selected haiku by accomplished English language haiku poets such as Peggy Lyles, George Swede, Lee Gurga and others.

We also have re-instituted an annual High/Coo Press Chapbook competition, publishing three chapbooks each spring.

We celebrate the integration of visual arts (photography or painting) and haiku by publishing online collections available for free at the Brooks Books Haiku web site.

We celebrate contemporary Japanese haiku by publishing dual-language editions of translations of selected haiku by leading poets such as Arima Akito, Masajo Suzuki and cross-cultural leaders of haiku such as Kiyoko Tokutomi. Most of our dual-language editions are distributed to book stores in Japan by Shokai Tuttle.

We also help distribute English haiku books from Japan for a few Japanese publishers, and we enjoy publishing reviews of important new haiku books and haiku magazines of interest to our readers.

As a small press publisher, we take pride in keeping our list of publications available as long as possible. Originally publishing under the name of High/Coo Press, from 1976 until 1989, we have been publishing under the official business name of Brooks Books since 1990. Many of our early chapbooks and mini-chapbooks are still available in our catalog, although we are getting very low on most of our pre-1998 publications.

We also celebrate haiku through unviersity teaching and workshops for community groups and schools. You can see the web site at Millikin University, associated with Randy's course on the Global Haiku Traditions.

So for the love of the art of reading and writing and publishing haiku, we welcome you to Brooks Books Haiku.

Randy & Shirley Brooks, Editors & Publishers
Brooks Books