Zoe Grant

Zoe Grant is 7 years old, an award-winning haiku poet from Auckland, New Zealand. She loves ballet, karate, and music, especially the flute. Zoe writes poetry with her mother Sherry Grant. Together they published and launched their first poetry book Bat Girl in June 2021. The mother-daughter duet co-hosted “Rengay Under the Moon” gatherings online in September 2021, with Garry Gay (USA) and Kala Ramesh (India) as guest speakers. They were also guest poets in six radio and journal interviews hosted in four countries from April to November 2021. Zoe’s poems have been published in many journals such as Failed Haiku, Stardust Haiku, Haiku Dialogue, the Bamboo Hut, Brass Bell Journal, Kontinuum, and many other anthologies around the world, including the 2021 NZPS Anthology. Zoe is best known for her haiku, senryu, and rengay. She is also the co-editor of Chalk on the Walk Haiku and Chalk on the Walk Monoku journals on Facebook.

Zoe’s Webpage: www.artsinfinitypress.com/zoegrant
Facebook: Chalk on the Walk Haiku | Chalk on the Walk Monoku

I first got inspired to write poetry by my mum who spends a lot of her time writing poems. We started our poetry writing journey together in June 2020. The idea of our first book ‘Bat Girl’ came from a Sunday morning, when I found my brother’s old Batman costume and put it on then jumped excitedly on my parents’ bed and convinced my mum to write a poem about it. We were learning about a kind of poem called gogyoshi at the time, so my mum took a photo of me and we wrote a gogyoshi together. Some of our poems are very funny and they rhymed, mostly about our family and kitten Cookie. Several of the poems are in the Japanese short form, like haiku, senryu, tanka, gogyoshi, and nonaku, a new short poetry form my mum invented in September 2020. We put the ‘Bat Girl’ book together within a week, with me illustrating for all of the poems including the cover after we decided to join an authors’ book event in Auckland, where authors came together at a market to sell their book publications. At first, we just printed the poems out and bound the books at home but half a year later we went to the book printer and got them made into pretty looking books, before the ‘Bat Girl’ book launch in June 2021, in which I performed ballet and my mum, my sisters and brother all performed music on different instruments. Purple is my and my mum’s favourite colour so the book cover for Bat Girl is purple, a big thank you to our editor friend Christine L. Villa (USA) for her help in improving the final look of the book. Soon we will also release it on Amazon as a book and e-book. ‘Bat Girl’ was written to inspire kids around the world to write poetry with their parents and grandparents, with their own illustrations.

scarecrow
I too stand
very still

I went to my first ever ballet competition in July 2021. It’s always been my dream to become a ballerina. My mum took a lot of photos of me in my pretty pink tutu and wrote a haiku about a firebird, which is also her Chinese pen name (火の鳥). My mum and I later went to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet of ‘The Firebird’. We also drove to Tauranga for some haiku workshops for 3 days, just me and my mum. One of the workshops was in Katikati where there was a haiku park. After we walked through the Haiku Pathway at the park, we thought it would be so nice to see haiku in parks around Auckland too. Later on, we saw a post online about a boy chalking haiku on the sidewalk. I and my mum liked the idea very much, and since we were in the middle of a very long lockdown in Auckland, we ordered some normal chalk and some boxes of coloured chalk. At the end of August 2021, we started our “Chalk on the Walk Haiku” project! On the first day, my sister Rebecca helped me chalk my award-winning haiku at the 2021 NZPS International Haiku Competition (Junior School Section), and after that, we made sure that we chalk a haiku each day on our long sidewalk, or if it rains, we share a haiga instead. Soon Rebecca and I decided to start another Facebook group called “Chalk on the Walk Monoku” to share one-line haiku. I chalk with my mum these days and usually get photographed a lot on my scooter. We really enjoy illustrating to these great poems by our haiku friends from all over the world.

rain puddle
my cat jumps 
over the rainbow

In September 2021, my mum organised a Rengay Under the Moon Gathering on a Sunday morning and afternoon. We invited lots of dear poet friends from all over the world to write rengay together. Our friends came from countries like NZ, Australia, India, America, Europe, and more. For the special speakers, we were very lucky to have Garry Gay (inventor of rengay) to join us, and Kala Ramesh who is also such a great haiku poet. I wrote my first rengay with my mum, just before her Haiku Society of America Rengay Workshop in June 2021. It was called “Dessert Time” and my mum used it in her rengay workshop presentation! She also showed her Chinese translation of it. After we wrote some more 2-person rengay, I didn’t write any 3-person rengay until a few days before co-hosting the Rengay Gatherings in September 2021. Ron C. Moss (Australia) was my first 3-person rengay writing partner, and after that my mum and I wrote many rengay with more friends in a very short time, to make sure I felt ready to co-host the rengay gathering! It was a very long day (9-11am and 2-4pm New Zealand time), but I stayed awake for all of it. A lot of my 3-person rengay have been published at different journals. Once I have written 50 rengay I will put them in a book to publish on Amazon. I am very close to this big goal!

origami
a pair of butterflies
flutter away

I am having so much fun writing poetry by myself, with my mum, and her poet friends. I’m also getting a lot of my poems published, I hope to inspire children around the world to write poetry as well! I know most kids like me will choose to watch TV or play games if they feel bored, but it is actually really good to be able to write down your ideas or keep a diary by writing poetry, and I feel very proud whenever my poems get published in a journal or anthology. In 2021 I was interviewed in four countries for my book ‘Bat Girl’ and that was very enjoyable. I got to read my poems on the radio shows. I am now also writing my own solo haiku books, and rengay books with my mum, I think I might be the youngest journal editor in the world (with Chalk on the Walk Haiku/Monoku), and the youngest person to have ever attended Haiku North America Virtual Conference (in October 2021) in the last 30 years. Later on I am planning to publish ‘Bat Girl’ also as an audio flipbook and make my own haiku podcast with my mum on YouTube, to share good poetry and teach more children to write haiku. Together my mum and I will start the nonaku journal, a new rengay annual anthology and run an annual rengay contest. I will teach kids’ haiku workshops sometimes too. I think everybody around the world should join us in our poetry revolution. Haiku is only 3 lines long and anyone should try it!

trapped
in the mug
gummy bears