Vanessa Proctor (born Vanessa Lara Proctor, 1970, Singapore), poet, editor, teacher, and mentor. She spent her formative years in the United Kingdom and has also lived in Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, and the United States. She holds an MA in creative writing. A member of the British Haiku Society and the Haiku Society of America, Proctor was a founding member of the Australian Haiku Society and served as its president from 2016 to 2020. She also cofounded the Zazen Haiku Group in New Zealand and the Red Dragonflies in Sydney, Australia. She edited the New Zealand anthology A to Zazen (2004) and coedited the second (2006) and fourth Australian haiku anthologies. Her own work has appeared in Temples of Angkor (2003), Jacaranda Baby (2012), and Blowing Up Balloons: Baby Poems for Parents (2017), which she cowrote with Greg Piko. Proctor has received commendations in numerous international contests, including winning the 2014 New Zealand Poetry Society International Haiku Contest, and has served as a contest judge. Resides in Sydney, Australia.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.