2024 Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems — Short List

The Haiku Foundation is pleased to announce the Short List for the 2024 Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems. 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 this second round, the panel selected their top choices from the Long List. This list reflects the 21 highest-scoring poems tallied from the collective voting. In the final round, the panel will select the haiku and senryu from the Short List that will be recognized as the Awarded poems for 2024.

Many thanks to our distinguished panelists: Gregory Longenecker, Marianne Paul, Agnes Eva Savich, Dan Schwerin, and Mary Stevens.

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

Please join us in cheering on these fine poets!

Robin Smith,
Coordinator, Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems

white suburb—
the diversity
of stone walls
— Brad Bennett, Prune Juice Journal, Issue #42

Ramadan sunset
sharing dates
in the ruins
— Mariangela Canzi, folk ku, Issue 3

train from Ukraine…
in his piggy-bank
forget-me-not seeds
— Cezar Ciobica, Frogpond 47:3

hospice window
my mother counts
shades of green
— Cezar Ciobica, The Haiku Foundation Kukai, July 2024

curly fries i morph into a flock of sea gulls
— Susan Beth Furst, Trash Panda #7

single-use petal
the delicate margins
of existence
— Mark Gilbert, 14th Polish International Haiku Contest

lambing
      the slow descent
            of a raven
— Lorraine Haig, haikuKATHA, Issue 37

buffeting wind
a child blowing bubbles
from her wounds
— John Hawkhead, Martin Lucas Haiku Award 2024

habitat loss
a woodpecker’s
. . . _ _ _ . . .
— John Hawkhead, tsuri-doro, a small journal of haiku and senryu, Issue #20

after despair name your next favorite color
— Peter Jastermsky, Fresh Out Magazine, Nov. 8, 2024

another mother’s day band aid for the exit wound
— Kat Lehmann, ONE ART Haiku Anthology, 2024

— Kati Mohr, Hauling The Tide, HSA Members’ Anthology 2024

come what may have been autumn twilight
— Christopher Patchel, Upstate Dim Sum 2024/II

explaining spring
to my blind sister
lilac breeze
— Meera Rehm, Leaf Journal, Issue 5

her first period added to the watchlist
— Julie Schwerin, Prune Juice Journal, Issue #42

— Julie Schwerin, Trailblazer Contest 2024

first day of shiva—
the wail of the baby
without her breast
— Sara Tropper, Modern Haiku 55.1

discussing morality
with the dead soldier’s child
rays of the moon
— Sara Tropper, The Pan Haiku Review, Issue 3

chronic illness the rests of my life
— Margaret Walker, Kingfisher #9

for giving and for getting plum stones in the icebox
— Marcie Wessels, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, January 7, 2024

alone
a meadow
makes me its weed
— Peter Yovu, The Heron’s Nest, Volume XXVI, Number 3