The Touchstone Award for Individual Poems Committee Announces Its Shortlist for 2018

We had a tremendous number of submissions to the Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems. The Awards recognize excellence and innovation in English-language haiku and senryu published in juried public venues during each calendar year. Twenty-six editors nominated about 500 haiku, and there were about 300 individual haiku nominations. Haiku were nominated from around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Africa, Japan, Israel and the Philippines. We would like to thanks all the editors and individual haiku poets who nominated poems published during 2018.

After much deliberation, the panel has selected a Shortlist of poems that will move on to the final round. The six panelists select the Shortlist by first selecting ten favorite haiku from the total pool of 800 plus nominations, or 60 haiku; in this first round, only three haiku were nominated by two of the panelists. In the second round, in another round of voting, the panelists winnowed the nominated 57 haiku down to the Shortlist. The Shortlist includes at least the top three or four haiku chosen by each panelist.

Reflecting the various haiku sensibilities of the panel, the Shortlist includes a range of traditional to experimental haiku, and this year there were three single line haiku. Twenty-one haiku on the Shortlist haiku were nominated by editors, and eleven were nominated by individual haiku poets (there are 31 haiku on the Shortlist due to a tie).

Many thanks to the distinguished panelists — Terry Ann Carter, Gary Hotham, Renee Owen, Michele Root-Bernstein, Dietmar Taucher and Wally Swist — who have been so generous with their time and effort over the past few months.

Touchstone Award recipients will be selected from the following list. Final results will be announced on April 17, as part of the Haiku Foundation’s celebration of international Haiku Poetry Day.

Bruce Feingold
Chair, Touchstone Awards

housewarming . . .
a swarm of honey bees
in the crawl space
     — Barnabas I. Adeleke, The Heron’s Nest XX:4
summer's end
the fence splinters
into meadowlarks
     — Elizabeth Alford, Stardust Haiku 20
learning to eat
around bruises
winter apples
     — Debbi Antebi, The Heron’s Nest XX:1  
lilac on her dress
for a moment
I'm in the fields
     — Faten Anwar, The Mamba 6
Russian nesting dolls —
where’s the room
to be oneself   
     — Betty Arnold, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society 2018 Members’ Anthology
blood moon
he doesn’t take no
for an answer
     — Susan Burch, Marlene Mountain Memorial Haiku Contest 2018
pre-dawn stars
plumes of breath
from a cattle truck 
     — Paul Chambers, Acorn 41
spring wind
a young sheepdog
skedaddles the lambs
     — Claire Everett, The Heron’s Nest XX:1
morning frost
how brightly shines
the barbed wire
     — Florin C. Florian, Johnny Baranski Memorial Haiku Contest 2018
signs of spring
at the bottom of one pot
shards of another
     — Robert Gilliland, Mariposa 38
your absence
in my hands
snowdrop
     — Eufemia Griffo, Modern Haiku 49.2
the mountains
Santōka never saw again —
closed saké shop
     — Engin Gülez, Iris Little Haiku Contest 2017 (published 2018)
silent
as a mouse
the trap
     — John Hawkhead, The Heron’s Nest XX:1
crow . . .
the dark crackle 
of river ice
     — Elinor Pihl Huggett, Geppo 43:3
keepsache
     — David J. Kelly, Frogpond 41:1
crown of thorns
things we make
with our hands
     — Jessica Malone Latham, Mariposa 39
petroglyphs
the short drive
to Los Alamos
     — paul m., Acorn 40
the blade
after the whetstone —
summer rain
     — Tanya McDonald, Mariposa 38
family gathering
sliced warm beetroot
stains what it touches
     — Ron C. Moss, Acorn 40
stepping stones . . . 
someone else
years ago
     — Guy Nesom, Mayfly 64
all soul’s day
something startles
a field of doves
     — Polona Oblak, Presence 60
another year
the weight of my shadow
on new snow
     — Joseph Robello, Mariposa 39
rain
one steeple
at a time
     — Bryan Rickert, Modern Haiku 49.1
deep night sky
the dashboard lights too bright
for this loneliness
     — Chad Lee Robinson, Frogpond 41:3
the heartbeat
of a painted pony
winter prairie
     — Chad Lee Robinson, Mariposa 38
skinny-dipping
in the outback river
paperbark trees
     — Maureen Sexton, Creatrix 43
summer visit
mother fits into
a smaller hug
     — Sushma A. Singh, The Heron’s Nest XX:4 
more automatic words about weapons
     — John Stevenson, Frogpond 41:2
fallow fields a light dusting of snow geese
     — Debbie Strange, Mariposa 39
peat bog
the spreading fire
of cloudberries
     — Debbie Strange, Shamrock 40
the thin whistling 
of the wind in the bottle
has faded away
     — Max Verhart, Chrysanthemum 24