The Competition Prizes

The IHS International Haiku Competition offers prizes of 

Euro 150, Euro 50 and Euro 30

for unpublished haiku/senryu in English.

In addition there will be up to seven Highly Commended haiku/senryu.

Entrants may win more than one prize.

Deadline:

 All the entries shall be postmarked by 31^th October 2009. Overseas (non-EU) entries mailed in the month up to and including this closing date must be sent by airmail.

Address for entries:

Administrator,

The IHS International Haiku Competition 2009

75 Willow Park Grove

Glasnevin

Dublin 11

Ireland

The Rules of the Competition

 
1.      Entrants may submit an unlimited number of haiku/senryu in any language.

2.      A haiku/senryu written in Irish (Gaelic), or in a foreign language, should be submitted accompanied by an English translation of the haiku on the same list. These translations cannot be made by the adjudicator of the competition or edited by him.

3.      Haiku by members of the IHS are eligible for the competition. Haiku by the members of the Board of the IHS are not eligible.

4.      Each haiku must be accompanied by a fee of € 3 or £2.50 sterling or ¥ 500, or USA $4. Or with each seven haiku: € 20 or£15 sterling or ¥ 3000 or $25. Methods of payment: personal cheques, International Bank Drafts or postal/money orders in Euro, or U.K Sterling, or US Dollars only, are acceptable and should be made payable to The Irish Haiku Society. No other cheques/ International Bank Drafts/ postal/money orders can be accepted. Entrants in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries should send Euro, US, Sterling or Yen banknotes, unless they have an Ireland-, US- or UK-based bank account. Please do not send coins.

5.      Haiku/senryu of 17 syllables or fewer are eligible for the competition. All haiku must be the original work of a living author. They must not have been previously published, self-published, published on an edited or unedited website, or have won a prize, or Honourable Mention, at a haiku contest.

6.      The poems must be typed or very clearly written on one side of the paper only. Each haiku must be submitted on a separate sheet of paper.

7.      The haiku and payment should be firmly attached to the entry form/covering letter. The name of the entrant must not appear on the poems themselves.

8.      Contestants are asked to provide a covering letter with their name, address, Phone Number, E-mail address, Date of Birth, Nationality, Occupation, the first lines of their poems, and any Haiku group affiliation. The name of the translator(s), if any, must also appear in the covering letter but not on the poems themselves.

9.      No alterations can be made to the haiku once it has been submitted, and it is regretted that no entries can be returned.

10. Haiku cannot be submitted via the adjudicator of the competition. Any attempt to contact the adjudicator of the competition in relation to it will result in immediate disqualification.

11. The judge's decisions are final and no correspondence can be entered into regarding those decisions.

Submission of haiku implies the competitor's acceptance of the conditions set out above.

The prize-winners will be announced and awarded in early November 2009. A list of the prize-winners will be posted up on the IHS website at

http://www.irishhaiku.webs.com/haikucompetition.htm as soon as they are announced.

Copyright will remain with the competitors, but the Irish Haiku Society reserves the right to arrange first publication or broadcast of selected haiku as it sees fit.

Adjudicator

 
Anthony Anatoly Kudryavitsky is the editor of Shamrock Haiku Journal and the current President of the Irish Haiku Society. His own collections include Shadow of Time (2005) and Morning at Mount Ring (2007), the latter being a book of haiku and senryu. His haiku have received awards in Ireland, Japan, USA, Italy, Croatia, Romania and Canada, and were published in the main haiku magazines.

Competition Rules in PDF format are available here

The Competition Results

The Irish Haiku Society is proud to announce the results of the first ever IHS International Haiku Competition. 177 haiku by poets from twelve countries (Ireland, UK, Northern Ireland, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Romania and Serbia) were submitted to this year’s competition. Half of the submitted poems were from the island of Ireland. This year’s competition was adjudicated by Anthony Anatoly Kudryavitsky, and it was judged blindly. It had been previously announced that an entrant may win more than one prize, which, actually, happened. The following is the list of prize-winning and highly commended haiku.

1^st Prize

 
John Barlow (UK) receives the first prize of Euro 150 for the following haiku:

mountain stillness
an empty chrysalis
fills with sunlight

2^nd Prize

 
The 2^nd Prize of Euro 50 also goes to John Barlow (UK) for the following haiku:

 summer morning
every other post
has its crow

3^rd Prize

 
Ernest J Berry (New Zealand) receives the third prize of Euro 30 for the following haiku:

early frost
the fragrance of pine
on fire

 
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Highly Commended Haiku

 
In alphabetical order:

John Barlow (UK)

 
cold rain…
the fishermen wade deeper
into the lake

Sharon Dean (Australia)

 
winter chill
a bull ant climbs
the flame tree

Walter Daniel McGuire (Ireland)

 
autumn breeze –
spider’s web
convex… concave

Roland Packer (Canada)

 
 
the open gate
to an empty field –
country graveyard

Roland Packer (Canada)

Christmas Eve
swaddled in the busker’s case
a fiddle

 Our congratulations go to all of the winners. We also express our sincere gratitude to the administrators of the competition, without whom… The Irish Haiku Society is planning to organise a free haiku workshop for the Irish entrants of the IHS competition, as well as for all the Irish haiku lovers who may wish to attend. Finally, plans are under way for next year’s contest. We are looking forward to turning the IHS Haiku Competition into an annual event!