1st Place
snowball fight
grandpa’s belly
white with snow
Lucy Whitehead
This is a delightful moment and connects beautifully to the painting. The association between grandpa’s belly and the snowman is wonderful, and we are filled with a feeling of family and good times. Like any good haiga there’s a strong interplay between the image and the haiku and we can see many connections here. The love and warmth of a grandpa, and the much-loved figure of a snowman, leaves us with a smile and a feeling of playfulness. In a few short lines the writer has given us so much to feel, and the memories of childhood, and sometimes-adult games, come flooding back.
2nd Place
winter doldrums
looking both ways first
i eat the snowmans nose
Michael Rehling
What fun! What a devious but totally delightful moment. We have this very funny situation with a clever juxtaposition to the winter doldrums. What could be more life-fulfilling, than to bust out with humour to bring us out of the winter blues? The poet is mischievous and don’t we love him for it – the spirit of the snowman might have something to say about losing his juicy carrot nose, but we are all the richer for the fun of it all.
As part of the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival, Myron Lysenko will be leading a haiku workshop on Sunday 14th July.
Number Eight Wire is the long-awaited Fourth New Zealand Haiku Anthology. The last anthology, the excellent The Taste of Nashi, was published a decade ago. The title Number Eight Wire is a reference from a haiku by Karen Peterson Butterworth to the New Zealand trait of innovation and resourcefulness – to be able to mend anything with number eight wire. It’s a fitting title which holds together a strong selection of 330 haiku from 70 poets which are, as the editors state in the introduction, ‘100% pure Aotearoa’, yet also universal. 
Australian Haiku Society 