Contrarians: Dissent in Japanese Inspired Micropoetics

by Jerome William Berglund, Robert Frede Kenter (Editor), Paul Brookes

98 pages, Paperback

Published August 11, 2025

About the author

A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. His recent and forthcoming writing publications include short stories in Paragon Press, Stardust, and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, and a Flying Ketchup Press anthology collection. He is also an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.

Reviews

[Nancy Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haiku and senryu often speak truth to power, and in this chapbook, haiku poets from around the world speak out and do just that. In these poems, a reader will find poets "tilting at windmills" to express their emotions about world events and so much more. But not every poem is angry; many poems just see clearly what is going on in a few words.

The editor, Jerome Berglund, divides the book into different sections and C.X. Turner provides context in the introduction about haiku poetry and its changing role in the world.

That this reader has a haiku/senryu (I don't always distinguish between the two) just makes me proud to be a contrarian.