A full set of results for the 8th Kokako Haiku and Senryu Competition will be published – in New Zealand – in the next edition of “Kokako”, accompanied by comments from the judge Catherine Mair.
In the meantime, the following entry by Australian haiku poet Barbara A Taylor was included among the poems rated as Commended:
in wild Kakadu
tourists take selfies
with a crocodile
The Haiku North America (HNA) 2015 Conference was held from 14-18 October at Union College, a liberal arts college founded in 1795 with a classically-inspired campus near the foothills of the Adirondacks in upper New York State. Appropriately for the setting, this year’s conference, Autumn Term was themed around the teaching and learning of haiku. After a welcome by HNA’s principal organisers Michael Dylan Welch, John Stevenson and Hilary Tann (other hard-working committee members were Yu Chang and Tom Clausen), 130 poet delegates each recited one of their own haiku/senryu.
The two Australians, Jennifer Sutherland and Marietta McGregor, along with poets who travelled from Japan and India, received a special welcome, a round of applause in appreciation of their long journeys. Jim Kacian launched proceedings with Realism is Dead, posing the question that, if haiku was no longer rooted in the real world, what might then ground it? The keynote address by Dr Randy Brooks examined some of the issues with teaching haiku in the American education system.
Australian haiku poet Cynthia Rowe has won the Grand Prize: 1st Place in the 2015 World Haiku Contest, with the following haiku:
bare branch
the wild persimmon
snow-flecked
Another entry by Cynthia was one of five haiku to gain an Honorable Mention in the same competition:
old railway track
a tumbleweed skips
through wild grass
Comments about Cynthia’s winning poem – provided by the judge for this contest, Alan Summers – can be read below:
Continue reading “Cynthia Rowe: winner – Grand Prize: 1st Place in 2015 World Haiku Contest”
Australian Haiku Society 