Leading Australian haiku poet, Janice M. Bostok left school at fourteen and enrolled in a secretarial course before moving to Melbourne in 1960 to work. After marrying, she lived in Cann River and in Dungay near Murwillumbah.
While she had written pieces based on personal experience for magazines from the late 1960s and had written free verse, Janice Bostok was inspired to write haiku in 1970 after reading a book of Japanese haiku in English translation. She found that the short haiku poem had 'a greater affect ... than any longer verse...' Her early haiku were accepted for publication in American haiku magazines and she was encouraged to continue writing and studying haiku in English. In 1972 Bostok established, published and edited
Tweed, the first magazine in Australia devoted to haiku. The magazine was supported by American haiku poets but the lack of interest in haiku by Australian writers at the time lead to its cessation in 1979.
In the 1980s Bostok studied at the University of Queensland. She graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in English Literature and a major in Women's Studies. Her writing and publishing slowed at this time but accelerated from 1988 nationally and internationally.
Widely published overseas in periodicals and anthologies in English and in translation, Bostok was awarded many prizes for her work. She was a member of haiku and writing organisations and judged, taught, mentored and edited haiku in Australia and overseas. Bostok read at festivals, workshops and events and broadcast on radio. Two haiku were carved on rock in Katikati in New Zealand. Through her poetry Bostok became interested in the art of sumi-e painting, adapting some of its principles to her own drawings and illustrating her own and other poets' works. (Adapted from author's website.)
