Haiku Happenings
This Month’s Article
Check out this month’s article:
Normative Haiku and Beyond by Lee Gurga
New Contests
Check out the latest contests
Publications
Explore publications
Thanks, as always, to the New Zealand Poetry Society for giving us space on its site – free of charge. If you’d consider joining the NZPS, it would be a small repayment for the hosting and support that we receive out of kindness. For those within New Zealand, your membership fees are tax deductible, as is any donation you make over the top of the annual sub. Read more about joining and membership benefits here, including how to join if you live outside New Zealand.
If you’d like to recommend an article, offer to write something for these pages, or generally have something to say about haiku and its related forms, please feel free to get in touch with me, Sandra Simpson. If you find any broken links within an article please let me know. Time passes and websites disappear but clicking on a broken link is always frustrating so I’d like to keep them up to date if I can.
Archives comprise Essays, Articles, NZ Haiku Showcase
and Haiku Commentary.
Contest Results
Golden Triangle Haiku Contest (US)
Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku Arts Contest (US)
Irmo Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest (US)
Fujisan Tanka Contest (Japan)
IHS Contest (Ireland)
Snapshot Press eChapbook Award (UK)
Polish Haiku Contest (Poland)
News & Events
Autumn Equinox Kukai
The Australian Haiku Society is hosting an Autumn Equinox Kukai on the theme of ‘autumn flowers’, which will be judged as a contest. Limit 1 haiku. Entrants will also judge, from April 3-10. Results announced April 17.
Submit: March 20-26.
Full details from the website.
Haiku Down Under Anthology Readings
Sue Courtney, who was the New Zealand representative on the organising team for Haiku Down Under 2022 and 2024, is inviting poets who contributed to either anthology (Poetry from the Edge, 2022 or A Sensory Journey, 2024) to join a Zoom reading on Wednesday, 23 April at 7pm NZDT.
An open mic will follow contributor readings so for those not published in the anthologies this will be an opportunity to share a poem. Contributors are also invited to read an additional poem in the open mic. For those who don’t want to read but just to attend and network with fellow haiku poets, that is okay too. Anyone from anywhere in the world is invited to join. NZST is 12 hours ahead of Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC), so check out a time zone converter and see if it works for you. Please RSVP to Sue in the first instance, further details will follow.
Haiku North America 2025
The biennial conference will take place in San Francisco in late September. Registrations have opened and proposal submissions are open until March 31.
Full details from the website.
Double Horizons anthology
Haiku poets who have published at least one collection of haiku in either English or French to contribute to a new English- and French-language anthology of contemporary haiku, Double Horizons, due to be published in December 2025. The project is the brainchild of the Association Francophone de Haïku and the journals l’estran and seashores.
Submit: By April 30. Full details can be found here.
Petals Waka Journal
The new Waka Society of America (membership details are on the website, link below, a small donation to join is welcomed) is to produce an annual e-book called Petals, edited by US poet an’ya. Only members may submit. Information about waka are also available on the website.
Submit: By April 30. Full details can be found here (scroll down)
Congratulations
To Sandra Simpson who has had a haiku selected to be featured on a signboard in the Golden Triangle Haiku Contest (US). The poems, on the theme of building bridges, are dotted about the Washington DC business district until early May. See all the winning and selected poems here.
Sensory Journey anthology
A Sensory Journey is the anthology from last year’s Haiku Down Under online gathering with the poems either written during workshops or break times or inspired during the weekend. The balance of the print run is now on general sale, with 10 copies in New Zealand so saving on postage costs for Kiwis (the rest are in Australia). There are various options available so please contact Carole Harrison (Australia) or Sue Courtney (NZ) for more information. See a small sampler of poems here.
Some changes
The ukiaHaiku Festival Contest normally takes place in March, but won’t have an international section (the Jane Reichhold Prize) in 2025 due to a lack of volunteers on the festival committee.
The Horror senryu journal is going on hiatus from February 1. Read the journal here.
Eccentric Orbits anthology
“We are looking for all forms of poetry that deal with speculative subjects. Science fiction, fantasy, or horror … in the case of speculative haiku, I ask that you group your ku in sets of 3 or 4 poems on a given speculative theme.”
Submit: By April 30.
Full details from the website.
Eastern Structures
A print journal from Canada, Eastern Structures is looking for 5-7-5 haiku and 5-7-5-7-7 tanka, as well as ghazal and sijo. It appears to be published twice a year.
Submit: At any time.
A few more details from the website.
The Abstractaphy Initiative
This project is aimed at raising awareness of global concerns through poetry, prose and art, including all the Japanese forms.
Submit: At any time.
Full details from the website.
End Notes
February 27, 2025: The weather readers on television will no doubt tell us that with the close of February summer has come to an end. Well, summer begs to differ, at least in my corner of the North Island where fine days and high temperatures rule. Drought has today been declared in Taranaki ‘amid desperate conditions’ as not only has there been no rain but groundwater is diappearing too. And that won’t be the only province suffering, it’s just the one that got there first.
Turning to things we might be able to control, have a look at the monthly article for some stimulation (in case your eyes slide past the link to the site where the essays are now archived, here it is again). Dive in and be cool! And then take yourself over to the Contest listings … – Sandra
HAIKU EVENTS 2025
April 17 International Haiku Poetry Day
May 16-18 Haiku Canada Weekend, Lennoxville, Québec, Canada. Read more here.
Sept 24-28 Haiku North America, San Francisco, USA. Read more here.
Oct 23-26 Seabeck Haiku Getaway, Washington State, USA. Read more here.