Winners of the
Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi
MemorialHaiku Contest 2013
Judges:
Makoto Nakanishi
and
Kaoru “Hana” Fujimoto
Results and Judge’s Comments
First Prize – $100
sugar moon rising
the wail of a midnight train
takes me home again
Ferris Gilli
In Japan, when we saw the phrase “sugar moon,” we wondered what kind of moon it was. Then we learnt that in North America it is an early-spring kigo, showing the season when sap rises in the maple trees and people make sugar syrup from the sap. This haiku has a good combination of a beautiful kigo, the sugar moon, with daily life, illustrated by the midnight train. We feel as if we could hear the wail of the train in the big-country stillness of the prairie under the sugar moon. We could see a wide scene and also sense the author’s delicate feelings towards nature. This is a haiku of greeting to nature, the sugar moon.
Second Prize – $50
church memorial
celebrating her long life
creak of grasshopper
Carolyn Fitz
The author’s ears catch the creak of a grasshopper at the memorial service in the church. A grasshopper has a faint sound, and it has a short life, in contrast to the poet’s long life. We feel the solemnity of the author’s feeling for nature. The kigo of grasshopper works well in this haiku. We avoid emotional words in writing haiku; this poem implies emotion without telling the reader what to feel. We feel this haiku has a positive view of the universe.
Third Prize – $25
open cellar door
faint voice of a grasshopper
lulls baby to sleep
Roberta Beary
This poem has the very sensitive feeling of a poet catching even a little insect’s soft voice, which must be coming from downstairs, in the corner of the cellar. It is like a lullaby, and a lullaby always makes all of us – not only babies – feel calm and comfortable. The juxtaposition of the grasshopper’s voice and the lullaby is good.
HONORABLE MENTION
tales of our wildness
set off cycles of laughter—
clinking iced coffee
Peggy Heinrich
first sun barely up
the clatter of black-eyed peas
poured into a pot
Ferris Gilli
New Year’s reunion—
once again grandfather gets
the coin in the cake
Linda Papanicolaou
From the bare hilltop,
Watching migrating raptors.
How far will they go?
Don Olsen
sharing a silence
under tonight’s sugar moon
the old dog and I
Desiree McMurry
from a stiff clothesline
black long underwear flapping;
Amish washing day
Jennifer Sheridan
decades in L.A.
the baggage I still carry . . .
longjohns in my drawer
Gregory Longenecker
drinking iced coffee—
I check the yes box to be
an organ donor
Mike W. Blottenberger
first sun of the year
a street workman disappears
into a manhole
Marilyn Appl Walker
through the bay window
a sugar moon pours itself
into jelly jars
Poppy Herrin
CONTEST JUDGES
Makoto Nakanishi is a professor at Ehime University, Faculty of Education, in Matsuyama, Japan. He has conducted research extensively on literacy education in primary and secondary schools. In 2012 he presented his paper “Young Buds” at the 5th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, cosponsored by YTHS. His English-language poems have been published in western journals and anthologies, including the 2012 Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4 (2012).
Kaoru “Hana” Fujimoto is a Councilor of the Haiku International Association (HIA) in Tokyo, Japan, and a member of the Japan Traditional Haiku Association. She writes for the haiku magazine Tamamo (waterweed), first published in 1930 by Takahama Kyoshi and his daughter, Tatsuko Hoshino. For ten years she has worked at the Tokyo Bureau of the New York Times. She appreciates being a judge with Nakanishi-sensei for Yuki Teikei Haiku Society.
Kigo for the Contest
The contest coordinator selected these kigo for the 2013 contest: for New Year, first sun and New Year’s reunion; for spring, sugar moon and soap bubble; for summer, iris and iced coffee; for autumn, migrating raptors and grasshopper; and for winter, whale and long underwear. Some modifications to the contest kigo were acceptable, including the alteration of a kigo from singular to plural (or vice versa). Also acceptable was the modification of a kigo to use a synonym; for example “migrating hawk” was acceptable as a variant of “migrating raptors.”
Yuki Teikei Haiku Society 