The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems are bestowed annually on poems that represent noteworthy additions to English-language haiku and senryu in the estimation of a distinguished panel. The Awards are open to any English-language haiku or senryu first published in the current calendar year.
What Is The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poems?
The Haiku Foundation, as part of its mission to expand possibilities for English-language haiku, created the Touchstone Awards Series in 2010 for individual haiku and senryu (The Touchstone Award for Individual Poems) and books (The Touchstone Distinguished Books Award). In 2022, the Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun was added to recognize individual haibun.
All awards seek to reward excellence and innovation each calendar year. Results are determined through a year-long nomination and selection process and are released the following year on April 17, International Haiku Poetry Day. Award recipients are selected by independent panels comprised of authorities in the field.
How Are Panel Members Chosen?
The panel consists of five members who are chosen by the Touchstone Awards Committee. The Committee chooses panel members who have demonstrated expertise in the haiku and senryu genres.
How Are Haiku Nominated?
Throughout the year, the Coordinator for the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems solicits nominations of haiku and senryu from journal editors and contest organizers. In addition, any individual may nominate two poems (haiku or senryu), one of which may be their own. For this award, publication is constituted by, but not limited to, first appearance in a juried or edited public venue such as a book, journal, online site, or contest. The Awards Committee reserves the right to determine whether a poem meets this criterion.
Nominations for the current year will open shortly after the previous year’s awards have been announced. Poems written by the Coordinator of the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems or any of its panelists are ineligible for nomination during their terms of service.
How Are the Winning Haiku Selected?
In the first round, the five panel members consider the entire anonymous roster and nominate ten of the most exceptional poems of their choosing. These become the Long List. In the second round, the panel discusses the merits of the long-listed poems and ranks their top selections, of which the highest-scoring poems become the Short List. In the final round, the panel discusses the merits of the short-listed poems and ranks their top selections from the Short List, of which the 5 highest-scoring poems are recognized with Touchstone Awards. Once the awarded poems have been determined, the panel members write commentaries for each. Authors and citations for winning poems are revealed to the judges along with the public.
How to Submit
The deadline for the latest Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems is December 31st of each calendar year.
You may nominate no more than two poems, only one of which may be (but does not have to be) your own work. Nominated poems must be submitted with our entry form.
Nominated poems must be submitted with our entry form.
Entry Form: Touchstone Award for Individual Poems
Ethics Statement:
Each year, the Touchstone Awards (Books, Haibun, and Poems) have dedicated Coordinators. The nominations for each Award and their data (voting and panel discussion) are siloed from the other Awards and are only seen by that Award’s Coordinator.
Hence, Coordinators are eligible for Awards in the different categories in which they are not involved since they are not privy to that information. Likewise, the Committee Chair cannot access data unrelated to his Award section until the results are published.
The Panel for Award Year 2024
Gregory Longenecker is a 2019 recipient of a Touchstone Award for Individual Poem and has received honors in haiku/senryu contests both here and abroad. He has served on committees for Haiku North America, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and the Southern California Haiku Study Group, where he served as Moderator and Editor of the Members’ Anthology for three years. Gregory was also a Judge for both the Haiku Society of America and the British Haiku Society. Additionally, Gregory has given presentations on haiku topics before several local haiku groups and authored a book of haiku, Somewhere Inside Yesterday (Red Moon Press), and was featured in A New Resonance 9. He and his wife live in Pasadena, California.
Marianne Paul is a Canadian poet and writer. Her chapbook, Body Weight: A Collection of Haiku and Art, was published by Human/Kind Press and won the Haiku Canada Marianne Bluger Chapbook Award. Her haiku and art have also been recognized through first place standings in the Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Competition, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku Festival, and the Shambhala Times Midwinter Haiku contest. Her full-length poetry book, Above and Below the Waterline, was published by BookLand Press as well as three novels: Tending Memory, Dead Girl Diaries, and Twice in a Moon (originally published as The Shunning). Marianne’s willingness to innovate with poetry was recognized through being chosen as a finalist in the first annual Trailblazers Contest. Her short-form poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, online and in print. A member of Haiku Canada, she served as co-editor of the members’ anthology, random sampling.
Marianne’s happy obsessions include book arts and bookbinding, easy kayaking, shade gardening, and back porch birdwatching. She enjoys playing with a holistic approach to the arts, blending media and types of writing while still honouring the importance of form. Her latest project is paper heron press, a micro-publishing house that focuses on the tactile relationship between book and poem. Each chapbook is a limited edition and handcrafted with the first in the series, humming right along. You can see more of Marianne’s work on Instagram @ms.haiku and Twitter @mariannpaul.
Agnes Eva Savich is a university program coordinator, oboist, and widely-published haiku poet since 2004. Among her other activities, she founded (2019) and still leads the Austin Texas Haiku Group; served as judge of The Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards (2022) and the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Contest (2020); edited A Charm of Finches: The Haiku Society of America Southwest Region 2021 Members’ Anthology; and co-presented the Memorial Presentation for Haiku North America 2021. Savich has resided in Poland, France, and Chicago, and currently lives in Pflugerville, near Austin, Texas.
Dan Schwerin loves evening walks and labyrinths with his wife Julie. His poetry comes from life on a farm or making his rounds across thirty-plus years as a pastor in Wisconsin, and now as the bishop of the Northern Illinois Conference of The United Methodist Church. His debut haiku collection, ORS, from red moon press, won the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award in 2016. Dan was the founder of the Haiku Waukesha study group (2015–2021); the group’s work was featured in Blossom Moon (edited by Lee Gurga and Kelly Sauvage Angel, 2020). He helped his wife Julie Schwerin establish the Words in Bloom: A Year of Haiku program at the Chicago Botanic Garden (2020–2021). You can find him on Twitter @SchwerinDan. He began writing haiku after finding an old copy of American Haiku in a northern Wisconsin library.
Mary Stevens is author of her haiku collection, enough light (Red Moon Press, 2023). She judged the Peggy Willis Lyles Awards competition in 2024, co-judged with John Stevenson the Nicholas Virgilio Haiku Contest in 2013, presented on wabi sabi at HNA in Schenectady, NY in 2015, and was co-editor of Frogpond‘s linked forms sections in 2021. She is a member of the Haiku Poets of the Garden State, the Broadmoor Haiku Collective, and the Route 9 Haiku Group. She was featured poet on Cornell University’s Mann Library Daily Haiku Page in December 2020 and won first place in the Harold G. Henderson Memorial Awards 2020, second place in the Peggy Willis Lyles Awards, 2020, and the Museum of Haiku Literature Award for Best of Issue in Frogpond, 2022. She is a freelance book indexer and owner of Look Within Indexing & Editing and lives at the foot of the Catskills in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley.