Touchstone Awards for 2013

nagasaki . . .
in her belly, the sound
of unopened mail
     —Don Baird, 2013 HaikuNow! Contest (The Haiku Foundation)

Comments
from the
Panel

“Likening birth to unopened mail is a lovely touch. Adding one of the cities that experienced the atomic bomb creates a number of other resonances exploding with meaning.”

“The site of an atomic bomb blast paired with the unachieved (yet to be achieved?) potential of a child. We don’t know if this modern haiku takes place now or in the past, but it works by creating a number of relationships. There is the obvious one between the bomb blast and the loss of life and future of its victims, but also between the actual victims and future humanity. It is a warning whose effect is heightened by the sound—a ripping, tearing sound—of unopened mail.”

overnight the spider's mathematics
     —John Barlow, Robert Spiess Awards (Modern Haiku)

Comments from the
Panel

“Simply complex or complexly simple? The image in the poem appears as suddenly and mysteriously as the unnamed web does. Magic. The visual image and the abstraction work together to create another dimension.”

night border crossing—
the elephant calf holds
his mother's tail
     —Sonam Chhoki, Shamrock 26

Comments from the
Panel

“The physical border as well as the parent/child border, but precarious at night.”

“. . . implicit contrast between animals’ natural connection to one another and humanity’s irrational drawing of boundary lines, and the superior animals’ ignoring the silliness of humankind.

washed up body
the one who moves
toward it
     —Mike Dillon, Modern Haiku 44.3

Comments from the
Panel

“The first line compels the reader’s attention. The second heightens the tension by focusing on an onlooker. The third provides only one detail— he/she is going to the victim, not away. The reader is left to imagine this person’s motives and subsequent actions.”

“Genuinely dark haiku are a rarity. This has psychological depth, holding out the possibility that the person taking the lead here may be the least expected to do so.”

“It isn’t until the third line that a narrative begins, one in which the unnamed second body starts toward the first. Is it to offer help? To pull it further ashore for inspection by police? In a less literal reading, the second body is all of us moving toward the inevitable.”

sand dune    the width of the wind
     —Harry Frentz, Jeanette Stace Memorial Awards (New Zealand Poetry Society)

Comments from the
Panel

“I love the notion of measuring wind, not the way weathermen do—in miles per hour, or force—but in space, its effect.”

“Mysterious, simple, concise, evocative, elusive, and lovely sounding.”

overcast morning
the road worker's gaze
on southbound geese
     —Ferris Gilli, Acorn 31

Comments from the
Panel

“A whimsical, snapshot effect helped by the specificity of “overcast” and “southbound” and the fact that it is the road worker gazing. Or, is the road worker the poet?”

prenuptial contract
fish bones neatly spaced
on white china
     —Ron C. Moss, Acorn 30

Comments from the
Panel

“A subtly enigmatic scene, the carefully placed fish bones being suggestive of a personality, or equally of some underlying tension. And then a twist at the end: who gets the china?”

“Appropriately chilling image and precise juxtaposition: the future of the (dead) marriage implied by the pre-nup contract equates to the devoured fish left behind on the sterile plate. Or, is the same control-freak behind both the prenup and the neatly placed bones?”

silence of snow
we listen to the house
grow smaller
     —John Parsons, Frogpond 36:2

Comments from the
Panel

“The falling snow is actually making the house larger on the outside, but inside, there is a growing claustrophobia. Using the sense of hearing to express this feeling catches the reader off-guard in an expansive way.”

“The first two lines are so quiet and uneventful that is might be easy to stop reading altogether if this was a longer poem. There is a preciousness to it. But then the third line subverts that, and reveals a needed foil, a dark side, by placing man in contrast to the power of nature. This smallness before nature, before something larger, is a part of winter.”

Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku, edited by Allan Burns
Snapshot Press, Ormskirk, UK
available here

Comments from the Panel

Searching on the wind,
   the hawk’s cry
       is the shape of its beak.
               —James W. Hackett
     river's song
     a wounded turtle
     slips into it
                    —Marian Olson
the lake they drained
amber eyes
of the osprey
               —Allan Burns

apology moon
by Cherie Hunter Day
Red Moon Press, Winchester VA, USA
available here

Comments from the Panel

timeout
the necessary roughness
of blackberries
     new litter of kittens—
     the missing rung
     on the hayloft ladder
intertidal zone turning over my options

The Disjunctive Dragonfly: A New Approach to English-Language Haiku
 by Richard Gilbert
Red Moon Press, Winchester VA, USA
available here

Comments from the Panel

sap rising he imagines me completely
               —Melissa Allen
     never touching
     his own face
     tyrannosaurus
                    —John Stevenson
inside a bat’s ear
a rose
opens to a star
               —Eve Luckring
     at the edge of the universe a two-way mirror
                    —George Swede
lunar landing shipwreck of my slave name
               —Tyrone McDonald
     In fields       the purple
     flower whorls      careful
     eternity’s       from here
                    —Rebecca Lilly

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years
edited by Jim Kacian, Allan Burns and Philip Rowland
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, USA
available here

Comments from the Panel

end of the line
the conductor starts turning
the seats around
               —Cor van den Heuvel
           visible lilacs
        shaped by
     invisible lilacs
                    —Robert Boldman
horizon
why and
why not
               —Rajiv Lather

A Five-Balloon Morning
by Charles Trumbull
Red Mountain Press, Santa Fe NM, USA
 available here

Comments from the Panel

farmers market
the Indian corn seller's
snaggletoothed smile
     Hopi silversmith
     teaches his son
     to make a chain
small-town cafe
a special tip for the waitress
named Destiny

In a world that is becoming more and more whitewashed it’s a pleasure to read this collection, full of surprises, calling attention to not just the landscape but the characters who people it.

grass hill country
a boy rides bareback
over red earth