Judge's Report

Despite haiku's rocketing popularity over the last decade - with countless promotions, competitions, on & off-line workshops; regional, national & international get-togethers; competitions and how-to-haiku books et al, the quality of entries doesn't appear to have improved much since I last judged this competition 7 years ago:

Too many of the offerings disqualified themselves by breaches of haiku's basic tenets and a large proportion of the remainder were of marginal quality. In my opinion, it is dishonest and counter-productive to deny aspiring writers honest feed-back on the faulty premise that the truth may offend, so I have tried to be as considerate as possible in this is report - hopefully without discouraging anyone or overstepping the line between constructive and destructive criticism.

The setting-out and printing of entries was interestingly varied. From pencilled scribble to 48 pt fancy fonts on vellum. Such attempts to IMPRESS only waste your time, effort & money. Remember, judges are only swayed by what they read - not by "the jewelled finger pointing to the moon" [Basho] - a barely legible masterpiece will always beat brilliantly presented mediocrity.

Those who wonder why their baby didn't ‘make it' may ask themselves the following basics:

was it

1. brief

2. believable,

3. evocative,

4. fresh,

3 poetic,

5. syntactic?

did it

6. scan,

7. sing,

8. expose,

9. juxtapose,

10. ahaa! ?

did it avoid:

1. predictability

2. tautology

3. read-ons

4, similies

5. emotions

6. hackneys

7. adjectives

8. adverbs

9. metaphor

10. anthropomorphisms

11. sentiment.

12. cuteness

13. contrivance?

The commonest fault was trying too hard - usually showcased by adjectival diarrhoea and a surfeit of in's, and's, a's, are's & the's. (some) remind(ed) me of Twain's classic reference to adjectives:" if you see one, kill it". To that I'd add my own axioms: "the keener the axe the cleaner the cut", and: "all literature is too loong"

We should bear in mind that ‘spoon-feeding' the reader with every tedious detail, however ingenious, is not in the spirit of haiku and only tends to blunt the axe of imagination. Refer Eric Amann's book Wordless Poem and, another of my axioms:- "haiku means delete".

Haijin tight-rope between brevity, impact, poesy, lyracy and comprehensibility; so If we want our work to be understood, we should avoid enigma, esoterics and any constructions which confuse or look like shopping lists, sentences, headlines, epitaphs, epigrams, anagrams or telegrams. Capitals and full-stops should be rare. Nor do we want riddles, political, religious, romantic or emotional rants or rehashes of tired haiku about sunsets, reflections, cherry blossoms, 'fall' leaves etc. Or random snippets of prose which any untutored scissor could produce.

Consider the famous: "old pond/a frog jumps in/water sound" (Matsuo Basho), or the lesser known but equally evocative "dusk/up to my ears/in birdsong" (John O'Connor), or gunshot/the length/of the lake (Jim Kacian). These three classics, which contain only one adjective, 2 definite articles, no 5/7/5, and an average of only 8 syllables between them; so you see, complexity is no match for simplicity. I've noticed many of our mainstream poets and literary brains still can't get their heads around haiku so you don't need to be an egg-head to write it.

On the other hand, we do want poetry - something which grabs us by the shorts - where every word & syllable works its passage toward an end product that SINGS! ... Discipline, constraint and the courage to delete could prove the difference between winning and losing.

So to this year's worthy winners:-

NB: all criticism is subjective and depends on infinite variables concerning a judge's gender, identity, & background. These factors could mean the difference between winning and losing.

1st Prize:

backing out
of the spider's web
... sorry

Quendryth Young, NSW, Australia

Shades of Issa? This pearl survived all readings till it topped the ‘probables' pile and, hopefully, has universal appeal. To me it has nearly* all the requirements of a classic - the poet entices us down this alley, path, corridor, avenue, whatever - between fences, walls, portals trees (we're left the choice of scenario - which is important because it allows the widest variety of readers to relate in their own ways) ... It's sparse , disciplined, multi-layered, open-ended, non-specific, and atmospheric - without mentioning dusk or morning mist the poet has us on a wordless leash of time and climate.

Reminds me of beach-combing some years ago when my life crossed paths with a tiny netted crab. As i carried it back to the ocean I thought - "hope nobody heard me apologise" - If they HAD, I may not have identified with this poem and there could have been be a different winner.

* deleting ‘spider' might be worth considering.

Another option: backing out/ of spider silk/ ... sorry

As with all haiku there are endless alternatives - that's what makes it so fascinating.

Second Prize:

waiting room

a calendar shows

the wrong month

Jim Kacian, VA, USA

Bearing in mind the anonymous: "Sorry this letter is so long - I didn't have time to write a short one", I can appreciate the discipline it took to abbreviate this tale ... ‘waiting room' is so evocative and something we can all identify with so it's a good start, and in true haiku spirit the writer spares us details such as ‘teen pregnancy', ‘gyno', spring rain, trimester, morning sickness etc.

Well done - we have a short story in 8 words - like WOW!

Third Prize:

spring thaw
my ex returns
the lawn mower

Joanna Preston, Christchurch

Dunno whether to laugh or weep at this! Is their romance perennial like the grass? Are they at the breaking point? or reconciling? This could be the shortest Mills ‘n Boon ever!

Fourth Prize:

two hands

on her teacup

still it shakes

André Surridge, Hamilton

Unfortunately something we all relate to these days as we become more aware of Parkinson's - the staccato repetition of t's accentuates the rattle. Can't you just HEAR it? - ouch!

Fifth Prize:

abed with fever
swirl and eddy of finches
in the apple tree

Jeffrey Harpeng, Qld, Australia

Normally, I don't dig 5/7/5's but for some reason this one got to me big time. Then again, if it had been rendered:

fever

the swirl of finches

in the tree

it might even have reached my tree-top!

 

No dissertation on haiku is complete without stressing brevity. Even apart from haiku it could mean the difference between life and death: the fewer words we use to get a message across, the quicker it's comprehended and acted on. Eg: "take care - achtung- you are entering a mine-field" (a standard sign in Korea during the 1950 war) ... by the time I read it I was dead. Or the ubiquitous: "PASSING LANE 500 M AHEAD" ... ahead? - Where else?

the quality of haiku is not strained

it droppeth like a gentle

plop from a

strain

er

 

Ernest J Berry, Picton, June 2007

 

 

NZPS Home