THF Monthly Kukai — January 2022

 
 
Welcome to the THF Monthly Kukai.

This month’s theme:
snow
 
 
 
Note: Anonymity is an essential part of any kukai. Please respect this to offer the reader (and voter) the opportunity to choose only the poem.

The THF Kukai Overview

A kukai is a (usually quite casual) poetry contest. The administrator of the kukai (that’s us) assigns a theme for a given writing period and posts to Troutswirl (The Haiku Foundation blog) on the THF site, which is then redirected outward through our various media outlets. Poets write work to this theme during the allotted time and submit it to the administrator. The work submitted is gathered into an anonymous roster and posted to Troutswirl (The Haiku Foundation blog) for public viewing. At that time all participating poets and other interested readers may vote for their favorites. Votes are tallied and the results made public. The top winners will be acknowledged each month, and offered their choice of prizes from a list compiled by the Foundation. Please remember that everyone who votes is a winner — the process of choosing your personal favorites is not just fun, but also one of the best ways to improve your own haiku practice!

Results of Last Month’s THF Kukai

theme: long night

In December there were 143 submissions from twenty-eight countries spread across five continents.
Eighty-four voters casting ballots determined the following results.

First Prize
dusk till dawn
the length of
an apology
     — Michael Henry Lee (77 points - 8; 4; 4; 3; 3)
This emotionally charged haiku succeeds in conveying a tense situation very succinctly, with the spare accumulation of nouns and prepositions and not an adjective or adverb in sight. My understanding of it is that two people –– very likely they are partners, though close relatives or even housemates is also a possibility –– have fallen out over something, and it is up to one of them to apologize to the other. It seems that a whole evening and night must pass before he or she can manage this. Perhaps the overnight reset, so to speak, has helped things along.
Second Prize
winter solstice
among the greetings cards
a seed catalogue
     — Keith Evetts (40 points - 4; 3; 0; 3; 2)
I can read this poem in two ways: as depicting a commercial catalogue lying on the doormat or the kitchen table along with the rest of the day’s mail delivery, or conceivably as being someone’s innovative version of a gift card, now on display among others already received. This ambiguity sits fine with me, the main point being that the shortest day of the year signals a turning toward the not-so-distant spring.
Third Prize
this long night
the silence of snowflakes
falling into snow
     — Deborah Beachboard (39 points - 3; 5; 1; 0; 1)
This resonant haiku expresses something that many of us will have observed, yet perhaps have never really paused long enough to fully experience or appreciate. Here the poet offers us a whole night of silently accumulating snow. It remains open to interpretation whether she has recently woken, in which case this is a retrospective insight, or alternatively has for some reason been awake throughout the night, in which case a whole other scenario is implied. For we would have to wonder about the reason for that –– whether the cause was insomnia, or keeping a vigil of some kind, for example.
Fourth Prize
hospital bed —
the night when time
forgets to tick
     — Hazel Hall (38 points - 3; 4; 2; 0; 1)
I have to declare that I am not a fan of personification in haiku, while at the same time acknowledging that it can be effective in longer poetic forms. (The Metaphysical poets come to mind as a glorious example, with personification and simile being at times their principal modus operandi.) All that aside, in this particular haiku I think the reader immediately grasps that it is all about the poet’s own perception and experience, in this case of an interminable and presumably sleepless –– even pain-ridden –– night.

Honorable Mentions
cemetery breeze
a blackbird pulls a worm
out of darkness
     — john hawkhead
For me this is the December kukai’s outstanding entry. The breeze of the first line sets a life-affirming tone, transforming the lines that follow––where the words “black(bird)” and “darkness” might otherwise have come across as sombre––into an evocation of regeneration and renewal. It is one of those rare haiku that succeed in encompassing what it means to be alive, and mortal.
long night . . .
I attempt to understand
the cricket's story
     — Srinivas S
dawn wanting to know how it ends
     — Deborah Karl-Brandt
tracing
the river to its source . . .
long night
     — Stella Pierides

Remarks are by Dee Evetts, THF Monthly Kukai Commentator. He is an internationally known haiku poet and author of “The Conscious Eye” series on contemporary themes in Frogpond in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Writing for The Haiku Foundation Monthly Kukai

On the first day of each month The Haiku Foundation will announce the kukai theme for that month. This theme should be the topic of your poem, and may be stated (by using the theme word or words) or implied. Form may be traditional (three-line, 5-7-5) or free (various numbers of lines and/or syllables). Season words (kigo) may or may not be used at the poet’s discretion. A poet may submit one poem per theme. All poems must be the original, unpublished work of the author. In order to maintain the spirit and fairness of the kukai, a poem that has appeared anywhere with its author’s name cannot be allowed for submission.

Please use the Kukai submission form below to enter your poem, and then press Submit to send your entry. No other submissions will be recognized or honored. Once a poem is submitted it cannot be revised. All poems must be signed (that is, no “anonymous” poems will be accepted, and the Submit button will not be available until both Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in). Poets will not receive acknowledgment of their submissions. Poems will be accepted from the announcement of the theme through midnight of the 15th of that month. All poets are eligible to participate. Administrators of the kukai are ineligible to submit poems. Your submission form to us should look something like this:

line one
followed by line two
and then line three

or

this poem is all in one line

or

            jjjjjjjjjjj
kkkkkkkkkk
                    lll
   mmmmm

[all lines right-justified]

If your poem has special formatting requirements you should note them as in the third example above.

Good luck, and have fun!