MARK STUART FARRAR
I make things from ideas.
Sometimes they're poems or stories. Sometimes they're essays, books, designs, or digital products. What connects them is curiosity: noticing something that interests me and finding the form that best expresses it.
HAIKU COLLECTION · PUBLISHED AS MARK STUART
A collection of 81 English-language haiku exploring the small, easily missed moments in which the ordinary becomes worth noticing.
Arranged through the four seasons, Warmth of Stone reflects my fascination with haiku as a poetry of attention: saying just enough, leaving space for the reader, and discovering connections between seemingly ordinary things.
View Warmth of Stone →WRITING
HAIKU · WEEKLY PUBLICATION
A weekly publication devoted to English-language haiku, combining poems, writing prompts, craft insights and contributions from other poets.
It grew from a haiku newsletter I began in 2024 and reflects my continuing fascination with what can be accomplished with very few words.
Read Haiku Passion →MICROFICTION · DAILY PROJECT
972
So far, I've written and published 972 microfiction stories — each exactly 55 words long.
The first 100 were collected in A Collection of 55-Word Microfiction Stories: Volume 1. The daily project continues on Twisted Flash Fiction.
ESSAYS · WEEKLY PUBLICATION
Essays about work, business, creativity and the assumptions we rarely stop to question.
Drawing partly on my own experiences, I write about corporate life, entrepreneurship, ideas and finding different ways to think about familiar problems.
Read The Corporate Hamster Wheel →BOOKS & GUIDES
PERSPECTIVE & THINKING
A short exploration of perspective, false dichotomies and what can happen when we stop assuming that the choices presented to us are the only choices available.
View Option E →
HAIKU & APHANTASIA
An exploration of writing image-centred poetry without mental imagery, and the different ways an aphantasic writer can observe, remember and create.
View the guide →
MEMORY & LEARNING
A practical demonstration of memory techniques, using an apparently pointless challenge as a way to learn a skill that can be applied far beyond memorising pi.
View the book →DESIGN
A little visual wordplay for people whose unread book pile has become something of an achievement.
A practical seat belt cover designed to make hearing loss immediately visible to first responders and others in situations where a failure to respond could otherwise be misunderstood.
Caesar's famous three words acquire a fourth for people who came, saw — and wrote a haiku about it.
An affirmation printed backwards so that its most important audience — the person wearing it — can read it in the mirror.
ABOUT
I'm Mark Stuart Farrar, a British-born writer, poet and maker living in the United States. I publish much of my creative work as Mark Stuart.
I've spent much of my life following ideas to see where they lead. Sometimes that means a three-line haiku or a 55-word story; sometimes it becomes an essay, book, design, digital product or web-based tool.
My interests range from haiku and microfiction to creativity, memory, entrepreneurship and the ways we perceive and think about the world. What connects them is curiosity — and the pleasure of turning an idea into something that didn't exist before.