Nicholas Anthony Virgilio (June 28, 1928 – January 3, 1989) was an internationally recognized haiku poet who is credited with helping to popularize the Japanese style of poetry in the United States.
Virgilio moved back to Camden following a bad love affair in Texas [2] and discovered haiku in 1962 in a book he found at the library at Rutgers University-Camden.
Writing for Haikupedia, Geoffrey Sill wrote that Virgilio is "considered a founder of haiku written in the American idiom.
He was a member of Camden's Sacred Heart Church and helped to found the Walt Whitman Center for the Arts and Humanities (now the Cooper Library in Johnson Park), where he also served as its artistic director and poet-in-residence.
[8] His well-known "Lily" haiku is engraved upon his gravestone: Virgilio's papers are housed at the Paul Robeson Library at Rutgers University-Camden.