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2022 Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems — Long List

The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems recognize excellence and innovation in English-language haiku and senryu published in juried public venues during each calendar year. In 2022, we received 1294 distinct entries submitted from 42 journals and 395 individuals, who also nominated from numerous anthologies, books, and contests.

 

The Touchstone Awards are a truly international affair, as English-language haiku and senryu nominations come from around the globe: this year from Africa, Asia, Australia, Eastern and Western Europe, New Zealand, and North America. Our heartfelt thanks to the editors and poets who nominated poems.

 

In the first round, the six panel members consider the entire anonymous roster and nominate their ten highest-ranking poems. These become the Long List. This year we only have 53 poems due to several overlapping in panel members’ choices. In the second round, the panel selects their top selections from the Long List, of which the top 30 become the Short List. In the final round, the panel selects the top haiku and senryu from the Short List to be recognized as the Award winners for 2022.

 

Many thanks to our distinguished panel — Roberta Beary, Gregory Longenecker, Pravat Kumar Padhy, Marianne Paul, Agnes Eva Savich, and Angela Terry. They have been incredibly generous with their time and effort over the last several months. Their diligence, expertise, and thoughtful consideration have been beyond exemplary.

 

The final results for The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems will be announced on April 17, as part of the Haiku Foundation’s celebration of International Haiku Poetry Day.

 

Robin Anna Smith

Coordinator, Touchstone Awards For Individual Poems

 

 

bird’s eye speedwell
all the march clouds
blown to blue

— Meredith Ackroyd, Blōō Outlier Journal, Natural History Haiku Issue, Summer 2022

 

letting go
of what’s not mine
prairie wind

— Hifsa Ashraf, tinywords 22.2, October 27, 2022

 

sunrise
all the colours
of a second chance

— Gavin Austin, Wales Haiku Journal, Spring 2022

 

long summer night
the coffin maker sleeps
inside his coffin

— R. Suresh Babu, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.2

 

leaving him
a love note
six persimmons

— Stephanie Baker, Geppo, Volume XLVII:2, May 2022

 

as if damp
were a colour . . .
deep woods

— Sidney Bending, Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, Caitlin Press (2022)

 

in the field
among the bush clover
shell casings

— Deborah A. Bennett, Haiku in Action, Issue 27

 

rabbit + owl = owl

— Tom Blessing, ubu., Issue 3, March 2022

 

autumn afternoon
up a ladder, down a ladder
move a ladder

— Alan S. Bridges, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.1

 

date rape a pocket full of posies

— Susan Burch, 2022 Marlene Mountain Contest

 

skipping stones
answering questions
with questions

— Christopher Calvin, Stardust Haiku, Issue 64, April 2022

 

coming out . . .
my father’s love
with an *

 — Peg Cherrin-Myers, Kingfisher #6, October 2022

 

schrodinger’s womxn knowing and unknowing our place

— Tracy Davidson, 2022 Marlene Mountain Contest

 

i am i am not the darkness between subway stations

— Frank Dietrich, Frogpond 45:2 Spring/Summer 2022; re: Virals 368, October 14, 2022

 

{{{{{woodpecker}}}}}

— Keith Evetts, Cold Moon Journal, July 3, 2022

 

whale song—
the distances
that call us

— Lorin Ford, Echidna Tracks, Issue 9

 

Penrose process . . .
how much energy
can my heart muster?

— Joshua Gage, The Starlight SciFaiku Review, Issue 2, Summer 2022

 

the space between stars –
a missing child
remains missing

— John Gonzalez, Time Haiku, No 55

 

brand new day insert fresh violence

— Gary Hittmeyer, Frogpond 45:3, Autumn 2022

 

a vanessa flutters light’s thesaurus

— Marshall Hryciuk, whiptail: journal of the single line poem, Issue 3, May 2022

 

pressed freesia –
the fragrance
of absence

— Dan Iulian, The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku Dialogue, June 22, 2022

 

kite-flying lessons
holding on
while letting go

— Kim Klugh, Wales Haiku Journal, Spring 2022

 

spring green you discover my bare breasts again

— Isabella Kramer, Poetry Pea Journal 1:22

 

morning sea
I shake the night
from my wings

— Kat Lehmann, Kingfisher #5, April 2022

 

autumn unfolding a plaid shirt in the country store

— Barrie Levine, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.1

 

sun tea…
a slow pour
of afternoon

— Barrie Levine, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.3

 

(r)aging

— Barrie Levine, 2022 Marlene Mountain Contest

 

the magnolia
wasn’t ours, yet its absence
is

— Patricia J. Machmiller, Kingfisher #6, October 2022

 

refugee center—
an empty room
labeled family

— Ashish Narain, Modern Haiku 53.2

 

bus stop
a room inside
the rain

— Peter Newton, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.2

 

once more around the dance floor IV pole

— Lorraine A Padden, Blōō Outlier Journal, Senryu Special, New Year’s Eve/Winter 2022

 

stained glass the half-empty church

— Lorraine A Padden, Kingfisher #5, April 2022

 

roadcut—
a mountain spring seeps
from the Eocene

— Linda Papanicolaou, Mariposa #47

 

my size
the shoes he said
would see him out

— Alan Peat, Mayfly 73, Summer 2022

 

open range
the unbridled
horsetail clouds

— Bryan Rickert, Blithe Spirit 32.4, November 2022

 

shifting clouds my child’s pronouns

— Bryan Rickert, Prune Juice Journal, Issue 38

 

a bookmark
where my son
grew too old

— Chad Lee Robinson, Prune Juice Journal, Issue 37

 

in a while the firefly once

— Michele Root-Bernstein, whiptail: journal of the single line poem, Issue 3, May 2022

 

egg laying a little blood on the dew

— Rowan Beckett, horror senryu journal, September 24, 2022 (as Lithica Ann)

 

circling around
and around and around…
black dog

— Joshua St. Claire, Kokako 37

 

storm clouds
what a father says
with silence

— Rich Schilling, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.1

 

overcast sky…
a leaf floats back
to the burning pile

— Kavitha Sreeraj, haikuKATHA, Issue 4, February 2022

 

simmering heat
the pots and pans deliver
a timpani of spices

— Alan Summers, Haiku Seed Journal, September 20, 2022

 

chimney swifts
a headlong dive
into darkness

— Lesley Anne Swanson, Akitsu Quarterly, Fall 2022

 

silver lining—
what the storm takes
from the magpie’s fable

— R.C. Thomas, Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest 2022 (as Richard Thomas); Haiku Commentary, September 6, 2022

 

red lipstick smears
the little face
child bride

— Elisa Theriana, Prune Juice Journal, Issue 38

 

empty bird’s nest the span of a pianist’s hand

— Richard Tindall, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.4

 

64 crayons white the least used

— Margaret Walker, Babylon Sidedoor Journal, January 2022; re: Virals 330, January 21, 2022

 

heartwood something like forgiveness growing in the cut

— Marcie Wessels, haikuKATHA 11, September 2022

 

silent after
the shooting
stars

— Joshua Eric Williams, Rattle, Poets Respond, July 2022

 

tornado
the name stitched into
a kid’s cap

— Peter Yovu, hedgerow #140

 

taken up by a hawk
every letter of
a snake’s alphabet

— Peter Yovu, The Heron’s Nest, Volume 24.4

 

windless dawn
a marigold wreath
sways in the kelp

— J. Zimmerman, Acorn 48

This Post Has 14 Comments

  1. So delighted to see my poem on this long list of wonderful haiku. Thank you to the judges.

  2. Thank you so much! Am delighted to be on the list, in such fantastic company.

  3. An interesting and diverse Long List! Gratitude to the panelists and coordinator for their time. Congrats, everyone!

  4. Thank you to all of the judges and committee members for all of the work you have done to put this list together. I’m so honored and surprised to have a poem included. What a wonderful selection of poems!

  5. I’m surprised and happy to have a haiku on the long list this year! 🙂 Thanks to all involved in putting it here among some terrific haiku, one of which I recall commenting on myself, somewhere or other.

    And I’m delighted and amused by the sheer chance of the first letters of our surnames to have mine on the page right after Keith Evett’s resonant haiku. It’s as if we’d both responded, in our different ways, to an editor’s required topic-of-the-month. But I’ve never seen his before and would lay odds he’s not seen mine. Serendipity!

  6. Wonderful 🦜
    Thanks for all the work!
    And to editors everywhere.

    …and heartwarming to see that three of the poems appeared in re:Virals during the year: a particular delight. Bouquet to the poets who put them forward for commentaries.

  7. Thanks to the judges for including one of mine on the long list, and to Tia Haynes for publishing it originally in Prune Juice. Congrats to all the other poets!

  8. The proofreader in me has to point out that Alan Bridges poem s/b this:
    autumn afternoon
    up a ladder, down a ladder
    move a ladder

    Thank you to the judges for including me in this list! Amazing list of poems and congratulations to all the other poets!

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