Poetry Laurels: Farewell to Debbie Kolodji - A Fantastic Poet, Expert Editor, and a Great, Kind and Wise Person

Friday, August 30, 2024

Farewell to Debbie Kolodji - A Fantastic Poet, Expert Editor, and a Great, Kind and Wise Person

On 29 and 30 of August, 2024, the poetry community in Southern California said their farewells to Deborah P Kolodji, a friend of hundreds, inspiration and mentor of thousands. The Memorial Mass featured many of her haiku and tanka, interspersed among prayers, and tributes by her three children, Kirk, Sean and Yvette and a poet-friend from Japan, Mariko Kitakubo. Two weeks ago, the Southern California Haiku Study Group that she moderated honored her by a reading of her favorite poems, selected by SCHSG members. Today, we heard a lot more of her poems, and could read her haiga, distributed on commemorative cards, with family photos on the reverse.

Let's start this tribute to Debbie from her official biography:

Deborah P Kolodji (1959-2024) was the California regional coordinator for the Haiku Society of America and moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group. The former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, Kolodji was also is a member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, Haiku Canada, and the California State Poetry Society. She also served on the Board of Directors for Haiku North America.
Author of four chapbooks of poetry, her first full-length book of haiku and senryu is Highway of Sleeping Towns, from Shabda Press, which won a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award from the Haiku Foundation. Her e-chapbook of scifaiku, tug of a black hole, won 2nd place in the Elgin Awards by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and is available as a free download.
Kolodji published more than 1100 haiku in publications such as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Bottle Rockets, A Hundred Gourds, Acorn, Rattle, and Mayfly, as well as speculative poetry in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Grievous Angel, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Tales of the Unanticipated, Tales of the Talisman, and Dreams and Nightmares. She has also published short stories in Thema and Tales of the Talisman and a short memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her work has been anthologized in such publications as The Rhysling Anthology, Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: Poetry of Recovery, New Resonance 4, and The Nebula Awards Showcase: 2015.

That was written before her Vital Signs - last book - was published. At the memorial tribute, I found out that she was a passionate traveler and managed to visit 43 of all U.S. states, as well as many national parks, with her favorites being ocean-side camping, so she could spend her mornings walking along the beach, admiring wildlife in the tidepools, and listening to the waves. The Grand Canyon postcard reproduced above was accompanied with photos from the many family trips to picturesque sites:

Another of Debbie's passions was watching the Rose Parade in Pasadena every year, she staked out her spot, enjoyed the parade live and then went on to see the colorful floats in the park. For this year of the Dragon, she made a haiga card with a photo of one of the floats:

the desire

to spread our wings

Year of the Dragon

This card, too, had her photos from years of attending the parade on the reverse...

I first met Debbie when I started to participate in Poets on Site readings with Kath Abela Wilson and Rick Wilson. in 2008. We went to art galleries, wrote poems inspired by artwork, and attended events with musicians and artists where our poems were read and everyone enjoyed the confluence of the arts.

Debbie and Rick Wilson at Bolton Hall Museum 2012.

Knowing of Debbie's expertise and her haiku publications I invited her several times to feature at Village Poets's monthly readings at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga. For her first appearance, on 26 August 2012, she was accompanied by Rick Wilson on the flute, and read, among others a haiku inspired by a flower, the same matilija poppy that I placed on the cover of Meditations of Divine Names and anthology presented at the same reading.

matilija poppies
a skillet of fried eggs
on the campstove

This selection was quite a humorous commentary on the image I used for my book cover... The next, group reading brought a number of haiku poets to Bolton Hall Museum for "Thanks for Haiku" reading on the 27 November 2016. Debbie co-featured with Naia, and presented her first book, Highway of Sleeping Towns. Two of the haiku she read were the most notable, the one that provided the book's title and one inspired by her walking on the beach and watching the life in the tide pools:

highway
of sleeping towns
the milky way

morning tidepools -
a hermit crab tries on
the bottle cap

Haiku poets at Bolton Hall Museum, November 2016.

The warm humor of the hermit crab image made this brief poem a favorite of many - it was featured during the memorial group reading in mid -August and again prominently and repeatedly cited during the memorial service.

Debbie visited our community on 14 February 2017 for a reading of love poems at an exhibition of my rose photographs at our local bakery cafe - the Back Door Bakery in Sunland. I like her portrait against the backdrop of my roses:

Debbie reads love poems on 14 February 2017, Sunland.

Her next featured reading for us presented the Eclipse Moon anthology of Southern California Haiku Study Group, edited by William Scott Galasso. On 25 February 2018, at Bolton Hall Museum we enjoyed the two featured poets and many represented in the anthology. On that day, we both wore sapphire dresses and looked like sisters, in my favorite photo:

Debbie and Maja, February 2018.

Willam Scot Galasso, Rick and Kathabela Wilson, Debbie Kolodji, Nancy Eisner,

and Greg Longnecker at Bolton Hall Museum on 25 February 2018.

Our meetings were limited to these group readings; I did not attend any of SCHSG workshops that somehow were held on the same days as my events of the Modjeska Club, neither did I go to the many field trips, again held on weekends when I was busy with my family. But my respect for Debbie grew in time, seeing the incredible number of hours she invested in organizing poets together in the study group and the various events and conferences, such as annual holiday parties and annual anthology readings - held at Pacific Asia Museum and then, after its take over by USC, various church auditoria.

I must say I would not have written many haiku, haiga, or haibun, if not for Debbie and the events she organized. I could not attend many of the annual gift exchange holiday parties in early January, though I made it to the last one, and we were caught on camera, smiling (January 2024):

I cherished the many haiku and haiga gifts from this party exchange, and myself brought three postcards, all about the Year of The Dragon, which is supposed to be a fantastic year for all of us, full of blessings and happiness:

with Sun in its crown

to outshine fear and hatred -

the Dragon rises

courage, prosperity,
kindness, generosity -
Wood Dragon Blessings

Now that I read what I wrote, I think it should be "kindness, prosperity, / strength, generosity" - in any case, it is what it is, a holiday greetings. But the attributes are definitely appropriate for Debbie. To me, besides being an expert writer and editor, of immense erudition and wonderful skill with words, she was a very kind and patient person. Kindness and Wisdom are her two main characteristics... She never failed to remind me about deadlines for the annual anthology, and I wrote quickly. Then in 2022, knowing of my work as poetry publisher and California Quarterly Managing Editor, she invited me to work on the typesetting and design of the Haiku Group's anthology, Red Paper Parasols. It had a number of editors, different for each section, but at the end, thanks to Debbie's steadfast support, it turned out all right.

I picked a photo of a red paper parasol taken by one of the poets in Kyoto, Japan and mirrored it for the front and back covers. The anthology looked very good.

In return for my volunteer work (I was asked by friends to decline the invitation, I was far too busy, but not too busy to say "No" to Debbie...), she agreed to edit the last issue of the California Quarterly for that year (Vol. 48, No. 4, Winter 2022) , picking a beautiful abstract image by Tiffany Shaw Diaz for the cover and carefully selecting poems. In her editorial note for that she guest-edited, Kolodji wrote:

"Guest editing California Quarterly has been an honor. As I read through submissions, I found myself entranced by many of the nature-infused images I discovered, reminding me of a quote by Mary Oliver from A Poetry Handbook: “I must make a complete poem—a river-swimming poem, a mountain-climbing poem. Not my poem, if it’s well-done, but a deeply breathing, bounding, self-sufficient poem.” There are many river-swimming, mountain-climbing, deeply breathing, bounding, self-sufficient poems in this issue, and I found myself walking by a lake and watching a cormorant, sunlight break through pine boughs, a moose on a hiking trail, seeing crocuses emerge from dirty snow, and floating in a cranberry bog."

She was a long-time member of the California State Poetry Society and her haiku graced many pages of the Quarterly, that will publish a tribute to her memory, with five haiku included in the CQ Vol. 50 No. 3 (Autumn 2024). This information - Debbie involvement in Village Poets reading and in the CSPS publications may be surprising or irrelevant to haiku aficionados, but it just shows how different are impressions of the same person held by people that encountered her in different contexts.

There were many beautiful and touching poems read at the memorial tribute that included also references to her last book of poetry, Vital Signs (reviewed for CSPS Poetry Letter). Its cover, of a condor hovering above the pale moon, was striking, with its haiku:

The memorial card with Debbie's full professional biography included a different haiga, appropriate to the end of life ceremony:

Indeed, Debbie left us, going "away from all I've ever known" - and so many people came to mourn her passing... She wrote:

my steps

your steps

morning sand

She loved classical music and many of her poems talk about its beauty:

Chopin etude

your fingers feel

my sadness

She also often wrote about the stars, and the vast expanse of the summer night sky:

summer quiet

the stars dare me

to count them

Finally, there was time for a farewell:

waning moon
the sea roars
a lullaby

Her smiling portrait presided over the memorial Mass, next to Mother Mary.

Her farewell was solemn and sincere; even the priest's homily included quotes from her poems. Afterwards friends gathered to talk about her, and enjoy the reunion. Again, she brought the poets together...