Category: Haiku History in Australia

Haiku in the Bulletin, 1899

Flannel-flow’rs dancing
To the dawn on the hill-tops…
The Vision of Spring!

Is this the first prize-winning haiku published in an Australian journal or newspaper? It appeared over the name ‘R. Crawford’ in the Bulletin’s famous Red Page on 12 August 1899 along with 13 other haiku and two haiku sequences. Crawford and his fellow poets were responding to an invitation, extended by A. G. Stephens (aka The Bookfellow), to submit ‘some haikais, which must have an Australasian reference’. Stephens offered 10s. 6d.—roughly the equivalent of a day’s wage—for the best entry received.
Stephens’ interest in the haiku form was piqued by a similar competition run in the British journal Academy and Literature. Both competitions probably stemmed from the publication in England of W. G. Aston’s History of Japanese Literature.

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Perspectives on History – Haiku History 1980 –

Haiku in Australia was in the doldrums for quite a time after Janice M Bostok’s pioneering work. By the late 1980s only a few isolated poets were still engaged with haiku. All that began to change in 1988 – the year of World Expo 88 in Brisbane. The impetus came directly from Japan when Japan Airlines (JAL) decided to be a major sponsor of the Japan pavilion by sponsoring a haiku contest for children and other associated activities. This followed other successes in America and Canada. Continue reading “Perspectives on History – Haiku History 1980 –”