The Touchstone Individual Poems Award Committee Announces its Shortlist for 2014

The Touchstone Individual Poems Award recognizes excellence and innovation in English-language haiku and senryū published in juried public venues during each calendar year. The committee received an overwhelming response to its call for submissions for poems published in 2014, with nearly 500 nominations. To those many editors and individual haiku poets who answered the call this year, a sincere thank you.

After much deliberation, the panel has selected a shortlist of poems that will move on to the final round. Thanks, too, to the distinguished panelists 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.  Authors are presented in alphabetical order:

autumn sky
only one of us
deciduous

     Melissa Allen, Frogpond 37.1

tendrils of crabgrass
in every direction
that one lie

     Susan Antolin, Mariposa 30

the sky turns to snow
what to name
the heroine

     Francine Banwarth, Modern Haiku 45.2

forsythia
the widow’s blinds
part slightly

     Chuck Brickley, Mariposa 31

sine wave
a purple finch
does the math

     Alan S. Bridges, The Heron’s Nest XVII.4

the long night . . .
an old woman’s loneliness
follows me home

     Karen Cesar, Modern Haiku 45.3

dandelion fluff —
the weight of his army
burial flag

     Cezar-Florin Ciobîcă, cattails May 2014, UHTS Contests

night time
in the hospice aquarium
the pulse of fish gills

     Joyce Clement, The Heron’s Nest XVII.2

suburban street . . .
side by side in a bookcase
the tight-shut tales

     Jan Dobb, Kokako 21

clapping erasers
all my wisdom
turned to dust

     George G. Dorsty, bottle rockets 30

empty park
two crows start
the world over

     Robert Epstein, Acorn 33

global warming —
my cycles
closer together

     Seren Fargo, Modern Haiku 45.1

gingko leaves
my father rotating his pen
over a legal pad

     Michael Fessler, bottle rockets 30

Perseids
counting
mosquitoes

     Jeff Hoagland, tinywords 14.2

his promised
return
paper airplane

     Yvette Kolodji, The Heron’s Nest XVII.2

trailer park
never enough shade
for the chained dogs

     Burnell Lippy, The Heron’s Nest XVII.3

a
copy
stored
in
the
cloud
torn
leaf

     paul m., Mariposa 31

in and out
of the pumpkin’s smile
. . .a spider

     Carole MacRury, Shiki Kukai, October 2014

petition for divorce
the period
in every sentence

     Anna Mazurkiewicz, Prune Juice 12

“Do you want me?”
she whispers, and turns
to leaves

     David McCann, Acorn 32

ice fishing
my father tries to catch
his breath

     John McManus, Mayfly 57

old horses
days of endless rain
in their eyes

     Ron C. Moss, The Heron’s Nest XVII.4

afternoon rain
emptying a book
of its words

     Peter Newton, Frogpond 37.3

if glass breaks easily a bird

     John Stevenson, Frogpond 37.1

whale song
I become
an empty boat

     Michelle Tennison, Acorn 32

home from war
we ease out
the champagne corks

     Lew Watts, The Heron’s Nest XVII.4

sleep’s episiotomy you slip out

     Peter Yovu, Frogpond 37.3

birdsong broken into war bling

     Peter Yovu, is/let December 1

words furred over my awkward animal toward you now

     Peter Yovu, NOON: journal of the short poem 8