Starship Earth

Starship Earth

Adele Kenny

Collects 48 award-winning environmental haiku and senryu by Adele Kenny, former president of the Haiku Society of America. Includes translations from “The Canticle of the Sun” by St. Francis of Assisi, with poems arranged in four chapters focusing on earth, air, water, and fire.


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1990, saddle-stapled, 24 pages, 5½ x 8½ inches, ISBN 978-1-878798-01-4


  • Starship Earth, the fourteenth book from the pen of Adele Kenny, serves up dozens of prodding poems on the political and environmental state of planet earth. This volume is for anyone who senses the urgent necessity to preserve our planetary home, and for those who enjoy the sharp focus of well-written haiku. Each poem will shake you from complacency. —from the back cover

  • Artwork (uncredited in the book) by Michael Dylan Welch.

  • Second printing in 1995.

  • See the authors website.

Adele Kenny has been writing haiku and senryu since 1980. She has written fourteen books, including Starship Earth, Castles and Dragons, and Questi Momenti (all 1990); Counseling Gifted, Creative, and Talented Youth Through the Arts (1989); The Crystal Keepers Handbook (1988); Migrating Geese (1987); Between Hail Marys (1986); Promise and Prayer (1985); Illegal Entries, and The Roses Open (both 1984); Refusing the Frog (1983); An Archaeology of Ruins, and Notes from the Nursing Home (both 1982); as well as A Creative Writing Companion (1981).

Adele’s poetry, reviews, and nonfiction have appeared widely throughout the United States, in Canada, India, and Japan. She is the recipient of two Fellowships in Poetry awarded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and in addition to numerous awards for her longer poetry, she has received three Merit Book Awards, the Henderson Award, the Roseliep Memorial Award, and two Haiku Quarterly awards, one of which was for a selection from this book. A public school teacher for many years, she has also taught creative writing courses at Middlesex County College and the College of New Rochelle. Adele is active in poetry readings and workshops and has served three terms as president of the Haiku Society of America.

When asked what she has been doing to help save the earth, Adele replies, “I’ve written articles and poems for a number of wildlife and conservationist magazines; I’ve also picketed during hunting season at the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey; in my late teens and early twenties I worked on a wildlife sanctuary in the Adirondacks; as a teacher for nineteen years, I incorporated earth consciousness as much as I could into my lesson planning, and my gifted classes at the fourth grade level were required to do in-depth research projects on endangered species. Now, as a lector in church, I often lead general intercessions during Mass for the blessing and protection of our planet and its natural resources, and recently I read selections of Starship Earth at an Earth Day 1990 celebration.” Perhaps the publication of this book is another way Adele is doing her part to save starship earth.