Thursday, August 29, 2013

August 2013 Poetry Challenge Winners - Haiku

Photo
©Mark E. Wilson
Used with permission.

Charlotte Digregorio, Midwest Regional Coordinator of the Haiku Society of America (whose bio and poems appear on the original post for the August poetry challenge), agreed to judge the submissions. Here are the haiku that she selected as winners:

The First Place haiku is:

Walls of graying stone
crumble into gravel shards—
hewn by salty spray

~ Mark E. Wilson


Mark E. Wilson has been a lawyer in Chicago for about twenty-five years.  He lives in Lake County, Illinois with his wife and daughters, dog and two cats.  His writing is inspired by American life – in families and neighborhoods, suburbs and cities, courtrooms and board rooms, schools and play grounds, in the mind and in the mind's eye.  His poetry has been published in YesPoetry and other virtual places.  Mark is also a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, and an award-winning fingerstyle guitarist.  You may find a few of his poems at www.riseandshinepoerty.blogspot.com.

  
The Second Place haiku is:

picking blueberries
in Pa's favorite patch
gone now seven years

~ Peggy Trojan


Peggy Trojan, retired English teacher,  lives in the north Wisconsin woods by a trout creek.  She has been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies,  including Talking Stick, Verse Wisconsin, Dust and Fire, Echoes, Red Cedar,  and others.  She recently won an Honorable Mention in the Wisconsin People and Ideas contest.   She is a member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.



Copyright on poems are retained by the poets.
Feedback on Submissions from the Judge:

Digregorio included the following general comments when she notified me of the winners:

These are the major problems I saw with most of the entries:

1) Explaining, rather than suggesting. Haiku is subtle. It evokes an image.

2)  A clutter of images without any connection. Haiku should have either one image or two. When there are two images, they are seemingly unrelated at first reading. In thinking about them, the connection becomes evident.

3) Too many adjectives/description. Adjectives should be used sparingly, if at all.

4) Abstractions. Haiku is concrete with concrete images.

5) The 5-7-5 traditional syllable form of haiku is not required. Often, it leads to poets padding their lines to get enough syllables.


Haiku Society Meeting Invitation from the Judge

The Haiku Society of America will hold its National Meeting/Symposium, Friday through Sunday, Sept. 27-29, in Evanston, IL. It is free and open to the public. There will be expert speaker-poets from the U.S., Canada, and Japan. There will also be a free raffle of haiku books/journals. For details/registration form, contact Charlotte Digregorio, c-books@hotmail.com. (There is a nominal charge for Saturday lunch and Sunday cultural activities.)


© 2013 Wilda Morris