When I begin work on a haiku, my starting point is always something that I have noticed from flora, fauna, or other natural phenomena. For Japanese haiku, I’m sure to evoke the seasons, and even for English haiku my word choice will be evocative of such elements. Looking at the English language entries for the 35th New Haiku Contest, I noticed that the starting point for many of them was based more in observations of people. This really brought home for me how incredible haiku can be as a tool for depicting interesting facets of humanity. From Croatians saving up to purchase pigs through to Japanese having fun in convenience stores late at night, the genre of “people watching” now feels fully established.
We received more than 30,000 poems from sixty countries worldwide for this year’s competition. Many of the entries that passed the preliminaries were from Japanese junior and high school students, but entries from foreigners are also important in terms of a wider diversity of poems. While many simple poems that just lined up a few fragmented nouns did catch the eye, there were also many in the selections with some hardworking verbs (including present participles). These provide a jolt of youthful vitality. I hope we all continue to enjoy putting into words—and into English—those little discoveries, and those little twists and turns of the heart and mind that we experience in everyday life.
When I begin work on a haiku, my starting point is always something that I have noticed from flora, fauna, or other natural phenomena. For Japanese haiku, I’m sure to evoke the seasons, and even for English haiku my word choice will be evocative of such elements. Looking at the English language entries for the 35th New Haiku Contest, I noticed that the starting point for many of them was based more in observations of people. This really brought home for me how incredible haiku can be as a tool for depicting interesting facets of humanity. From Croatians saving up to purchase pigs through to Japanese having fun in convenience stores late at night, the genre of “people watching” now feels fully established.
We received more than 30,000 poems from sixty countries worldwide for this year’s competition. Many of the entries that passed the preliminaries were from Japanese junior and high school students, but entries from foreigners are also important in terms of a wider diversity of poems. While many simple poems that just lined up a few fragmented nouns did catch the eye, there were also many in the selections with some hardworking verbs (including present participles). These provide a jolt of youthful vitality. I hope we all continue to enjoy putting into words—and into English—those little discoveries, and those little twists and turns of the heart and mind that we experience in everyday life.