Haiku Happenings
This Month’s Article
Check out this month’s article:
The Weight of Lightness
by Tony Pupello
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
Betty Drevniok Haiku Award (Canada)
Maya Lyubenova Haiku Contest (Bulgaria)
Irmo Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest (US)
Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest (Romania)
Martin Lucas Haiku Award (UK)
BHS Awards (UK)
Touchstone Poem Awards (US)
Snapshot Press eChapbook Award (UK)
Touchstone Haibun Awards (US)
Kaji Aso Haiku Contest (US)
Touchstone Book Awards (US)
News & Events
Vale Cynthia Rowe, 1938-2025
Cynthia, a past president of the Australian Haiku Society, died in Sydney on April 6. The haiku editor of free XpresSion, Cynthia attended the 2012 Haiku Festival Aotearoa in Tauranga. Read more on the AHS website.
Quail Eggs Tanka Journal
To be published quarterly online, Quail Eggs is a new journal for tanka and closely related forms, such as tan-renga and tanka prose, edited by Alison Williams.
Submit: For issue 2 from August 1-31. Full details from this website.
Farewell to two contests
The aha haiku contest (August) and Fleeting Words Tanka Contest (April-May) are no more. The energies of the organisers will instead go into the Waka Society of America. Read more here.
Congratulations
To Sandra Simpson, who has been placed Third equal in the John Bird Haiku Dreaming Award (Australia). See all the winning poems, their artworks and the judges’ comments here.
To Peter Free, who has been placed Third in the Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest (Romania). Read the winning poems and judge’s comments here.
To Amelia Yu (aged 9) who has received the Young Poet Commendation in the Maya Lyubenova Haiku Contest (Bulgaria). See all the winning poems here.
To Jenny Polstra, who has received an Honourable Mention in the BHS Tanka Award; and to Owen Bullock (Australia) who has received an Honourable Mention in the BHS Haiku Award. Read all the winning haiku, tanka and haibun 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.
End Notes
End May, 2025: After a lovely month spent in England’s green and pleasant land (spring), it was back to solid rain for a day and then autumnal blasts. Ah well, it’s an excuse to curl up with one of the many books purchased in Blighty (no tax on them there), both new and second-hand.
Some literary sites were visited deliberately, but there were also accidental discoveries, such as the site where Dr Johnson and Boswell met at about 7pm on May 16, 1763. No. 8 Russell St, near Covent Garden, was the home, and possibly business place, of bookseller Tom Davis. Boswell, bless him, was a bit apprehensive, the sign said, for he knew Johnson’s opinion of Scotsmen was not high. No matter, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) was the result, often described as “the greatest biography written in English”! An informative blue plaque has been mounted on the modern walls of an Italian restaurant.
Meanwhile, we pursue excellence in haiku and its related forms and so we turn to this month’s essay which examines using lightness to write of weighty subjects. A neat trick if it can be managed. And don’t forget the Archive of essays is also there for help editing, writing and general support. The link to that is further up on this page. The Contest listing has been updated through to the beginning of September.
Two public holidays in June, so please enjoy King’s Birthday (June 2) and Matariki (June 20). – Sandra
HAIKU EVENTS 2025
Aug 22 National Poetry Day, NZ. 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.