Category: Members’ News

Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, May 2011 – Lorin Ford

A haiku by Lorin Ford will be published each day in May on the Mann Library’s Daily Haiku. She is honoured to be the first Australian to feature in this project:

http://haiku.mannlib.cornell.edu/

See archive link: http://haiku.mannlib.cornell.edu/2011/05/

RSS feed is available.

‘About Daily Haiku’ says:
“For over ten years, Tom Clausen posted a daily haiku in the elevator of the old Mann building. He continues to post them online from the Mann Library home page. The poets featured are by invitation only and the poems are almost entirely previously published original works of an extended haiku community that includes many of his friends. This site is an effort to share these works with those of you visiting us on our Web site. Haiku and related brief poetic forms are often very accessible, portable in mind and spirit and at best a knowing touch of what is poetically intuitive in our lives. We hope that you enjoy these expressions as much as we do.”

Check out the archives for a wonderful resource of previous collections of haiku whilst you’re there.

The Haiku Calendar Competition 2011 – Results

Australian haiku writers have again made a good showing in The Haiku Calendar Competition 2011 (Snapshot Press, UK).

Congratulations to Lorin Ford and Vanessa Proctor for their winning haiku, ‘on a bare twig’ (January) and ‘cloudwatching’ (June) in The Haiku Calendar Competition 2011 and to Jo McInerney for her runner-up haiku, ‘old scars’.

Full results are posted here:

http://www.snapshotpress.co.uk/contests/thcc/results.htm

and orders for the Calendar may be made via the website, too.

Greg Piko

Results – Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems

Congratulations to Quendryth Young and Greg Piko (Australia) and to Sandra Simpson (New Zealand) for their award winning poems in the The Haiku Foundation’s inaugural Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems. Haiku by two Australian writers and one New Zealand writer, three poems out of a total of seven award winners, certainly shows that ‘The Antipodes’ is on the world haiku map. The full results and judges’ commentaries may be read here:

Lorin Ford

The Tenth Anniversary Celebrations for the Katikati Haiku Pathway, New Zealand

by Vanessa Proctor

The Katikati Haiku Pathway in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty is an attractive embodiment of haiku, where the abstract becomes concrete. A total of 42 haiku are inscribed onto boulders along the Uretara Stream. Each poem has been carefully selected by a committee to reflect its surroundings, and to walk along the pathway is to literally take a trip into the world of poetry. The brainchild of Catherine Mair, the Pathway was one of New Zealand’s Millennium Projects and recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

I was fortunate enough to attend the celebrations on New Zealand Queen’s Birthday long weekend, along with my family. There was an excellent turn out of poets and supporters, including the Japanese Consul to New Zealand and his wife, and we enjoyed viewing an impressive selection of bonsai as well as ikebana inspired by poems on the pathway. Sandra Simpson, Secretary of the Katikati Haiku Pathway Committee, announced the winners of the Katikati Haiku Competition. Particularly striking was the quality of the entries in the junior section. Two Japanese students demonstrated how to wear a yukata, the traditional summer dress of Japanese women, and there was a rousing Taiko drum performance by Wai Taiko.

NZPS International Poetry Competition Results

Cloudcatchers has become a thriving group of haiku enthusiasts on the Far North Coast of New South Wales. The aim of each participant is to explore haiku in an individual way. For some this is reading; for most it involves writing haiku. A number of us send our writings to haiku publications and to competitions.

The results of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition (Haiku section) 2010 have just been announced. I am delighted to tell you that first and third prizes were won by Quendryth Young, with John Bird and Helen Davison receiving Commended awards; Helen for two of her haiku. Quendryth also won the ‘Jeanette Stace Memorial Prize’ for Senior Haiku 2010.

I thank Quendy, who has for several years organized our meetings, checked out suitable venues, coordinated post-ginko round robins and kept us all informed of competitions we might enter. I am so happy to see her achievements.

Nathalie Buckland