One Last Scherzo

Margaret Chula fell in love with classical music at age ten while repeatedly listening to an LP of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 on her mother's Victrola. She wanted to learn piano, but her family could not afford lessons, so she settled for playing clarinet in the high school band. Her first book, Grinding my ink, appeared when she was in her forties and received the Haiku Society of America Book Award. Since then, she has published ten collections: This Moment; The Smell of Rust; Shadow Lines; Always Filling, Always Full; What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps; Just This; Winter Deepens; Daffodils at Twilight; One Leaf Detaches; and Shadow Man. Chula has been awarded fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and Playa. Grants from the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Literary Arts have supported collaboration projects with artists, musicians, photographers, and a quilt artist. She has been a featured speaker and workshop leader at writers' conferences throughout the United States, as well as in Poland, Peru, Canada, and Japan. Chula served as President of the Tanka Society of America and as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music. After living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home in Portland, Oregon.