Haiku Happenings

Thanks, as always, to the New Zealand Poetry Society for giving us space on its site – free of charge. If you’d consider joining the NZPS, it would be a small repayment for the hosting and support that we receive out of kindness. For those within New Zealand, your membership fees are tax deductible, as is any donation you make over the top of the annual sub. Read more about joining and membership benefits here, including how to join if you live outside New Zealand.

If you’d like to recommend an article, offer to write something for these pages, or generally have something to say about haiku and its related forms, please feel free to get in touch with me, Sandra Simpson.  If you find any broken links within an article please let me know. Time passes and websites disappear but clicking on a broken link is always frustrating so I’d like to keep them up to date if I can.

News & Events

Congratulations

To Peter Free, who has been placed Third in the Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest (Romania). Read the winning poems and judge’s comments here.

To Amelia Yu (aged 9) who has received the Young Poet Commendation in the Maya Lyubenova Haiku Contest (Bulgaria). See all the winning poems here.

To Owen Bullock (Australia) who has received an Honourable Mention in the BHS Haiku Award. Read all the winning haiku, tanka and haibun here.

To Sandra Simpson who has had a haiku selected to be featured on a signboard in the Golden Triangle Haiku Contest (US). The poems, on the theme of building bridges, are dotted about the Washington DC business district until early May. See all the winning and selected poems here.

Double Horizons anthology

Haiku poets who have published at least one collection of haiku in either English or French to contribute to a new English- and French-language anthology of contemporary haiku, Double Horizons, due to be published in December 2025. The project is the brainchild of the Association Francophone de Haïku and the journals l’estran and seashores.
Submit: By April 30. Full details here.

Eccentric Orbits anthology

“We are looking for all forms of poetry that deal with speculative subjects. Science fiction, fantasy, or horror … in the case of speculative haiku, I ask that you group your ku in sets of 3 or 4 poems on a given speculative theme.”
Submit: By April 30.
Full details from the website.

Free Online Haiku Workshop

With Michael Dylan Welch as part of the Virtual Japan Fair in Washington State.
When: May 27, 6-8pm (US Pacific time), registration essential. Full details from the website.

Sensory Journey anthology

A Sensory Journey is the anthology from last year’s Haiku Down Under online gathering with the poems either written during workshops or break times or inspired during the weekend. The balance of the print run is now on general sale, with 10 copies in New Zealand so saving on postage costs for Kiwis (the rest are in Australia). There are various options available so please contact Carole Harrison (Australia) or Sue Courtney (NZ) for more information. See a small sampler of poems here.