Clark State College Professor of English Christopher Bays’ book of poems Edge of Suburbia was published in August 2021 by Red Moon Press. Red Moon Press (redmoonpress.com) has been publishing English-language haiku and related forms from around the world since 1993.
Bays’ book consists primarily of haibun – a Japanese prose-style poem with an emphasis on storytelling. Included also are modern-style haiku and monoku. The book revolves around Bays’ experiences growing up as a military dependent and his reflections on family, veterans, addiction, and poverty.
Bays said he has written poetry steadily for the past 15 years.
“When I was a young man and an undergraduate at Berea College in Kentucky, I won 1st place through a contest sponsored by the Academy of American Poets,” he said. “The judges for the contest at that time included Dr. Bobby Fong, the first English teacher who told me to not be lazy and waste my talent (He was a graduate of Harvard University) and Dr. Thomas Kreider, Chair of the English Department, who was kind enough to have me work as his teaching assistant and encouraged me to become a professional writer -- which I never did.”
Bays said out of respect for both those mentors, who have since passed, he wanted to write something they would have been proud of.
“I selected 65 poems that would adhere to a story arch through a collage of reflections and fragments, which, according to Dr. Rasmussen, Professor Emeritus of the University of Alberta, makes the book unique for the haibun/haiku tradition,” he said. “I decided to put this collection together as a means of showing others who may feel caught in addictions, environmental danger zones, war-afflicted areas, military dependence, or poverty that it is possible to outlive bad experiences and move forward above the follies of life. This book is dark for the most part, but it was cathartic for me.”
Terri L. French, author of multiple books of poems, editor at contemporary haibun online, and member of the Haiku Foundation states on the back cover of the book: “ In Edge of Suburbia we are invited as [Bays] revisits his childhood — his father’s war demons, his mother’s ghosts, his own loneliness and desire to fit in. We are reminded of the tenuous yet inseparable bonds between family, friends, community and the world we live in and the courage it takes to return to our roots and to listen to the echoes of the seeker inside all of us.”
Edge of Suburbia will be archived, later this year, in the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo, Japan, the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento and, once it reopens, The Poets House in New York City. The Haiku Foundation will include the book in its hard-cover collections on a permanent basis.
Edge of Suburbia is currently only available at redmoonpress.com and later it will be available on Amazon.com. A limited number of signed copies are available by contacting Bays at baysc@clarkstate.edu.
Bays teaches creative writing as well as composition and literature classes at Clark State. He and Professor Tabitha Parker also advise the creative writers club at Clark State.