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Winner of the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize, no matter how it ends a bluebird's song, was shipped with the Spring 2025 issue of Rattle. "Bluebird" went on to be a winner of The Haiku Foundation's 2025 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. "Bluebird" is Kat's first collection of haiku. (Read THF Touchstone Book Panel's commentary HERE.) (Read the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Panel's commentary HERE.) The contemporary haiku manuscript was selected as 1 of 3 winning chapbooks out of 2,362 submitted to Rattle. "Bluebird" was published in early 2025 and mailed with the spring 2025 issue of Rattle to approximately 10,000 subscribers. The book includes 81 single-line haiku, vertical haiku, concrete haiku, and tercets to express a journey of the sudden onslaught of illness through loss and healing. If you connected with the poems and enjoyed the book, please kindly visit Goodreads to add your rating, review, or other thoughts about the poems. Signed copies can be purchased for $9 + S/H. Feel free to contact me about this. |
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no matter how it ends a bluebird's song (Rattle, 2025) by Kat Lehmann. Layout and Design by Timothy Green. Cover art by Rachel Bingaman.
Reading selections from the "bluebird" chapbook on Rattle
[wondering what] and Other Haiku
[beyond the bed] and Other Haiku
[as much as I want] and Other Haiku
Rattlecast #295
...where I discuss "bluebird", haibun, sudo-ku, and more!
YouTube / Spotify / Soundcloud / iTunes / mp3
Praise for no matter how it ends a bluebird's song
Lehmann’s ‘no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song’ encourages readers to stretch their imagination. Truly a joy to discover the way each poem arrives and unravels. Readers can look forward to discovering the narrative throughlines that braid these poems together.
—Mark Danowsky, editor-in-chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry
[wondering what] and Other Haiku
[beyond the bed] and Other Haiku
[as much as I want] and Other Haiku
Rattlecast #295
...where I discuss "bluebird", haibun, sudo-ku, and more!
YouTube / Spotify / Soundcloud / iTunes / mp3
Praise for no matter how it ends a bluebird's song
Lehmann’s ‘no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song’ encourages readers to stretch their imagination. Truly a joy to discover the way each poem arrives and unravels. Readers can look forward to discovering the narrative throughlines that braid these poems together.
—Mark Danowsky, editor-in-chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry
Other Commentary and Reviews:
The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award commentary (excerpt below)
"Kat Lehmann’s no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song has already garnered accolades from the poetry world having received the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize. It’s easy to see why this collection deserves notice and praise. Lehmann explores the terrain of illness, loss, grief and recovery, subjects that have been written about across genres for generations. In lesser hands, the depiction of these human experiences risks becoming sentimental, cliché or redundant. Lehmann avoids these pitfalls through her skillful attention to the elements of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, imagery..."
Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards (Third Place (tie); commentary below)
"No Matter How It Ends a Bluebird’s Song is a masterful collection of 81 poems divided into nine sections of nine poems each. In numerology, the number nine represents the end of a cycle, it embodies completeness or wholeness, the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. That meaning wholly informs Lehmann’s fascinating chronicle of her struggle with an unnamed illness which affected both mind and body and seemed to elude effective treatment. From cover to cover the collection elicits a range of deep seated emotions, as you can’t help but feel an overwhelming empathy for her struggle.
torn vein
I make a Pollock
of the sheets
the doctor shrugs nothing he can for me withering wind"
Book review in CALYX by Chantelle Flores
Reader reviews from The Haiku Foundation site:
We’ll still be reading this one in a hundred years. —JSC
This is definitely a standout book among haiku books, for the quality of the poems and the narrative that carries the reader to the end. Touchstone worthy for sure! —RS
A landmark book in the haiku genre that will be an inspiration to future writers. Every poem layered and meaningful. A very well-deserved (Touchstone) winner. —JH
Reader reviews from Goodreads:
This achingly beautiful book chronicles the author's journey from deadly illness back to life. But life is never forsaken even as it is in ruins--as her process is illuminated and memorialized by this collection of haiku: precise, small poems that resonate from the specific to the universal; that entrance and energize the psyche of the reader. I can't recommend this book strongly enough... —WG
Kat Lehmann's memoir in haiku is riveting and poignant. I've never read anything quite like this before, and I immediately ordered a copy for a friend. Like Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing influenced musicians to break out in new directions, I think the author's poetry in this Rattle chapbook will inspire other poets to experiment with more haiku--the best kind of contagion. —CG
The pages of this prize-winning Rattle chapbook breathe in and out in poignant facing
of mortality when dealing with serious illness. Wow.
'becoming the bed be still and know" Lehmann is a haiku master especially of monoku.
A book to reread and read. —DM
This beautifully written chapbook captures the emotional and physical rollercoaster of a journey through illness and healing. The author has a great talent for evoking complicated images and emotions with just a few words. —DW
Every single line moved me. Every poem was beyond perfect. This was a creative masterpiece and the author is a literary genius. First short read I would recommend to whoever asks me for suggestions. —AM
For a writer who needs 250 words to clear his throat, I’m blown away by those who capture emotion and tell stories in so few syllables. Haiku is a different form than I am used to, but that is my issue, not the poet’s. Experimentation in form and function makes sense as a way of providing contrast and change... —K
I confess, I rather wanted to dislike this prize-winning chapbook, which, by appearances, seems to represent so much I find disappointing about contemporary poetry. But alas, it is, simply, good. --BJ
Kat Lehmann is an exceptional poet including expertise in contemporary English-language haiku, and this book shows how wonderfully talented she is. While others have used haiku to write about personal experiences with illness, Lehmann manages to not only create a memoir of her experience but to do so with excellent haiku. In fact, her formal innovations with the poems opened my mind to new ways to approach haiku and map perfectly to the experiences she is conveying in the book. It's no wonder the collection is a Rattle Chapbook Prize winner. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry, especially contemporary haiku, and/or memoir. —CR
First of all, don't get me started on how haiku is NOT 5-7-5, but if you can't get past that, you probably won't fully appreciate this beautiful collection, which won the Rattle Chapbook Prize last year. Lehmann's haiku mark her journey through debilitating illness to health. Her contemporary approach to the form--she includes many one-line haiku, for example--intermingles language, imagery, and emotion in an evocative way. This is a brave book on many levels and as a fellow haiku poet, I found the way she pushes the envelope with the form very fresh and inspiring. —KL
A beautiful and compelling memoir. I couldn’t put it down until the last page. And all told in haiku, saying more with less and letting the seasons tell her story. —NZ
This is my first encounter with a collection in haiku. I’m only just coming to an appreciation of the form, and I think this collection is a great entryway into the possibilities of the form for carrying a narrative arc.—K
Visceral and immersive, with so much gorgeous imagery. I'm not up to speed on the different types of haiku or how the form has evolved present day, so I probably need to study up on that a bit more and then come back to this to fully appreciate it. —RL
I read the book three times and still have more to discover on each page. Lehmann exercises virtuosic technique by bringing diverse forms of haiku to each of its nine sections, including the traditional three-lined, a few shaped like a forsythia branch or a growing crocus, the use of fading and darkening lines, and vertical lineation. The monoku form challenges me the most, as there are no cues in the punctuation or line breaks, and multiple possible meanings result. I'm enjoying the book as a puzzle now; I expect its emotional content to engage me in due time. —P
excellent controlled brevity —KS
sparse yet dense, each haiku is beautifully crafted —JL
Why wouldn't the word shadow have five W's in it if you're living under the shadow of illness and subject to the unknowns and inconclusivity provided by the medical community? This is a magnificent collection of haiku, monoku, and senryu written in so many imaginative formats. In addition to being a sensitive memoir, the collection is a study in the form, especially experimental concrete haiku, some written forward, some back, with words broken and unusual places reflecting a speaker's brokenness in the face of illness. Many in this collection have been previously curated in other journals. It's wonderful to see them collected as a whole. My favorite is the concrete "snow crocus" on page 33 which I won't spoil for you. Read for yourself. —CS
Thoughtful, beautiful, and creative. —ZVG
"No matter how it ends a bluebird’s song" is a breathtaking 9.3 out of 10—an elegant, deeply personal journey captured in haiku that shimmer with courage, craft, and emotional resonance. Kat Lehmann reshapes the boundaries of the form, blending classical restraint with bold formal experimentation to document illness, survival, and rebirth in ways both tender and transcendent. Each section unfolds like a soft echo, offering layers of meaning and imagery that reward rereading with new insights and emotional depth. Her mastery of monoku and visual haiku transforms the chapbook into a living, breathing memoir that invites both introspection and wonder. This collection isn’t just a poetic achievement—it’s a song of resilience that lingers in the soul long after the final page. —JK
The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award commentary (excerpt below)
"Kat Lehmann’s no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song has already garnered accolades from the poetry world having received the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize. It’s easy to see why this collection deserves notice and praise. Lehmann explores the terrain of illness, loss, grief and recovery, subjects that have been written about across genres for generations. In lesser hands, the depiction of these human experiences risks becoming sentimental, cliché or redundant. Lehmann avoids these pitfalls through her skillful attention to the elements of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, imagery..."
Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards (Third Place (tie); commentary below)
"No Matter How It Ends a Bluebird’s Song is a masterful collection of 81 poems divided into nine sections of nine poems each. In numerology, the number nine represents the end of a cycle, it embodies completeness or wholeness, the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. That meaning wholly informs Lehmann’s fascinating chronicle of her struggle with an unnamed illness which affected both mind and body and seemed to elude effective treatment. From cover to cover the collection elicits a range of deep seated emotions, as you can’t help but feel an overwhelming empathy for her struggle.
torn vein
I make a Pollock
of the sheets
the doctor shrugs nothing he can for me withering wind"
Book review in CALYX by Chantelle Flores
Reader reviews from The Haiku Foundation site:
We’ll still be reading this one in a hundred years. —JSC
This is definitely a standout book among haiku books, for the quality of the poems and the narrative that carries the reader to the end. Touchstone worthy for sure! —RS
A landmark book in the haiku genre that will be an inspiration to future writers. Every poem layered and meaningful. A very well-deserved (Touchstone) winner. —JH
Reader reviews from Goodreads:
This achingly beautiful book chronicles the author's journey from deadly illness back to life. But life is never forsaken even as it is in ruins--as her process is illuminated and memorialized by this collection of haiku: precise, small poems that resonate from the specific to the universal; that entrance and energize the psyche of the reader. I can't recommend this book strongly enough... —WG
Kat Lehmann's memoir in haiku is riveting and poignant. I've never read anything quite like this before, and I immediately ordered a copy for a friend. Like Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing influenced musicians to break out in new directions, I think the author's poetry in this Rattle chapbook will inspire other poets to experiment with more haiku--the best kind of contagion. —CG
The pages of this prize-winning Rattle chapbook breathe in and out in poignant facing
of mortality when dealing with serious illness. Wow.
'becoming the bed be still and know" Lehmann is a haiku master especially of monoku.
A book to reread and read. —DM
This beautifully written chapbook captures the emotional and physical rollercoaster of a journey through illness and healing. The author has a great talent for evoking complicated images and emotions with just a few words. —DW
Every single line moved me. Every poem was beyond perfect. This was a creative masterpiece and the author is a literary genius. First short read I would recommend to whoever asks me for suggestions. —AM
For a writer who needs 250 words to clear his throat, I’m blown away by those who capture emotion and tell stories in so few syllables. Haiku is a different form than I am used to, but that is my issue, not the poet’s. Experimentation in form and function makes sense as a way of providing contrast and change... —K
I confess, I rather wanted to dislike this prize-winning chapbook, which, by appearances, seems to represent so much I find disappointing about contemporary poetry. But alas, it is, simply, good. --BJ
Kat Lehmann is an exceptional poet including expertise in contemporary English-language haiku, and this book shows how wonderfully talented she is. While others have used haiku to write about personal experiences with illness, Lehmann manages to not only create a memoir of her experience but to do so with excellent haiku. In fact, her formal innovations with the poems opened my mind to new ways to approach haiku and map perfectly to the experiences she is conveying in the book. It's no wonder the collection is a Rattle Chapbook Prize winner. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry, especially contemporary haiku, and/or memoir. —CR
First of all, don't get me started on how haiku is NOT 5-7-5, but if you can't get past that, you probably won't fully appreciate this beautiful collection, which won the Rattle Chapbook Prize last year. Lehmann's haiku mark her journey through debilitating illness to health. Her contemporary approach to the form--she includes many one-line haiku, for example--intermingles language, imagery, and emotion in an evocative way. This is a brave book on many levels and as a fellow haiku poet, I found the way she pushes the envelope with the form very fresh and inspiring. —KL
A beautiful and compelling memoir. I couldn’t put it down until the last page. And all told in haiku, saying more with less and letting the seasons tell her story. —NZ
This is my first encounter with a collection in haiku. I’m only just coming to an appreciation of the form, and I think this collection is a great entryway into the possibilities of the form for carrying a narrative arc.—K
Visceral and immersive, with so much gorgeous imagery. I'm not up to speed on the different types of haiku or how the form has evolved present day, so I probably need to study up on that a bit more and then come back to this to fully appreciate it. —RL
I read the book three times and still have more to discover on each page. Lehmann exercises virtuosic technique by bringing diverse forms of haiku to each of its nine sections, including the traditional three-lined, a few shaped like a forsythia branch or a growing crocus, the use of fading and darkening lines, and vertical lineation. The monoku form challenges me the most, as there are no cues in the punctuation or line breaks, and multiple possible meanings result. I'm enjoying the book as a puzzle now; I expect its emotional content to engage me in due time. —P
excellent controlled brevity —KS
sparse yet dense, each haiku is beautifully crafted —JL
Why wouldn't the word shadow have five W's in it if you're living under the shadow of illness and subject to the unknowns and inconclusivity provided by the medical community? This is a magnificent collection of haiku, monoku, and senryu written in so many imaginative formats. In addition to being a sensitive memoir, the collection is a study in the form, especially experimental concrete haiku, some written forward, some back, with words broken and unusual places reflecting a speaker's brokenness in the face of illness. Many in this collection have been previously curated in other journals. It's wonderful to see them collected as a whole. My favorite is the concrete "snow crocus" on page 33 which I won't spoil for you. Read for yourself. —CS
Thoughtful, beautiful, and creative. —ZVG
"No matter how it ends a bluebird’s song" is a breathtaking 9.3 out of 10—an elegant, deeply personal journey captured in haiku that shimmer with courage, craft, and emotional resonance. Kat Lehmann reshapes the boundaries of the form, blending classical restraint with bold formal experimentation to document illness, survival, and rebirth in ways both tender and transcendent. Each section unfolds like a soft echo, offering layers of meaning and imagery that reward rereading with new insights and emotional depth. Her mastery of monoku and visual haiku transforms the chapbook into a living, breathing memoir that invites both introspection and wonder. This collection isn’t just a poetic achievement—it’s a song of resilience that lingers in the soul long after the final page. —JK
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