The Australian Haiku Society is proud to announce the 3rd running of the John Bird Dreaming Award for Haiku. This award is a biannual international haiku competition open to poets from all over the world.
Background: The award is named in honour of the “right-handed poet from the east coast of Australia” who instigated and established the Australian Haiku Society, bringing together haiku poets from around the country with the mission to encourage and promote the enjoyment of haiku. John was a passionate advocate for haiku that is written from an authentic sense of place which he encouraged through his “Dreaming Collection”. He was also a gentle mentor to countless Australian haiku poets and his influence on the growth of haiku in Australia is inestimable.
Entry Procedure: Please use the form below to submit to the John Bird Dreaming Award for Haiku.
Submissions: All submissions must be in English, unpublished and not concurrently entered for any other competition and remain unpublished until the results are declared. Submissions that have appeared in any print or online publication, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) will NOT be considered.
Contest organisers and AHS committee members are not eligible to enter. AHS Regional Representatives are eligible.
Deadline: 1st March 2025. Entries have now closed.
Entry Fee: None
Prizes: The first three place getters will receive an original ink painting featuring their winning haiku by renowned Australian artist and poet, Ron C. Moss. The prize-winning haiku plus those awarded Honourable Mentions will be announced on the Australian Haiku Society website on 1st May 2025.
Judges: Hazel Hall is a well published Australian poet, musicologist and international judge of short forms who enjoys working with other writers, artists and musicians. From 2018-2022 she directed the Poetry at Manning Clark House Series. Hazel has published three poetry books, four poetry chapbooks and co-published an anthology on climate change. Her latest book of sonnets and hybrids is A Hint of Rosemary (Interactive Publications, 2024).
Lyn Reeves, poet and editor, lives in Tasmania near a beach south east of Hobart. She has been writing and publishing haiku since the late eighties and has been active in Australia’s haiku community since the early nineties, most recently as an editor of Echidna Tracks: Australian Haiku and as Vice President, Australian Haiku Society, of which she is a foundation member. Among her eight publications her latest haiku collection, Field of Stars, was shortlisted for the prestigiousArts Tasmania Poetry Prize in 2022. She is also a co-editor of under the same moon: Fourth Australian Haiku Anthology (Forty South Publishing 2023).
The judges’ decisions are final, and no correspondence can be entered into regarding those decisions.
Australian Haiku Society 