Father Raymond Roseliep was a noted poet and haiku master and a faculty member at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. He was born on August 11, 1917, in Farley, Iowa, to John Albert Roseliep and Anna Elizabeth Anderson. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Loras College in 1939. From 1939 to 1943 he studied at the seminary at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., and was ordained June 12, 1943, at the Cathedral of St. Raphael, Dubuque, Iowa. In 1946 he joined the faculty of Loras College while working on his Master of Arts in English, which he obtained in 1948, from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature from the University of Notre Dame in 1954. After his retirement from teaching in 1966, he became the resident chaplain at Holy Family Hall, an infirmary for Franciscan nuns in Dubuque. Father Roseliep died December 6, 1983.
Widely published and recognized as a master of traditional English verse forms, Roseliep began experimenting with haiku in 1960 and published eleven collections of haiku between 1976 and his death in 1983. In addition to the major haiku periodicals which published his work regularly, more than ninety other magazines have printed his haiku, and he appears in many anthologies and in a growing number of textbooks. His haiku attracted critical praise from such poets as W.H. Auden, Josephine Jacobsen, Denise Levertov, William Stafford, X.J. Kennedy, and A.R. Ammons.
Roseliep won the Harold G. Henderson Award from the Haiku Society of America in 1977 and 1982, and the Shugyo Takaha Award (grand prize) from the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society of the United States and Canada in 1980. Sailing Bones earned him first place in the Merit Book Awards from the Haiku Society of America in 1981.
Biography adapted from: Roseliep, Raymond. Swish of Cow Tail. Amherst, MA: Swamp Press, 1982. Print.
Father Roseliep’s books:
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