Haiku Contest 2004

It is time for the sec­ond annu­al [and this time orga­nized a bit bet­ter] Organ­ic Mechan­ic Haiku con­test. Go here if you want to edu­cate your­self a bit on haiku.

The Prize

The win­ner will receive A Glimpse of Red : The Red Moon Anthol­o­gy of Eng­lish-Lan­guage Haiku and a com­pi­la­tion CD of ran­dom­ness made by yours tru­ly. The first and sec­ond run­ners up will just get the ran­dom com­pi­la­tion CD.

Rules

  1. You may only sub­mit two haiku.
  2. Your haiku must have sev­en­teen [17] syl­la­bles and three lines. Five [5] syl­la­bles in the first line, sev­en [7] syl­la­bles in the sec­ond line and five [5] syl­la­bles in the final line.
  3. Your haiku must be per­son­al, orig­i­nal cre­ations. No pla­gia­riz­ing.
  4. If you win, place or show you must give me your address so I can mail you your prizes.
  5. You may not use a Haiku gen­er­a­tor. Dum­b­ass.

Judging

I will judge the haiku based on cre­ativ­i­ty, wit and humor. I encour­age the use of puns and enten­dres and sly­ness of all kinds. It needs to make a state­ment of some sort. A tra­di­tion­al haiku is accept­able, but I encour­age you to stretch your­self. Use haiku like a stilet­to. Use it like a whoopy cush­ion. Make it dance a jig for who­ev­er reads it. That is what I want from your haiku. I want you to have fun. Whichev­er haiku teach­es me the best some­thing in a cre­ative and/or wit­ty and/or humor­ous man­ner will stand a good chance of win­ning. If you think what I’ve described it too hard, don’t frig­gin wor­ry about it. I’m more inter­est­ed in get­ting haiku than get­ting good haiku. Actu­al­ly, I guess I’m beg­ging you to send me some­thing. I do love to see what peo­ple can come up with. The con­test end on May 1st. I will accept sub­mis­sions until I take down the ban­ner on the 1st of May.

Disclaimers

You will retain the copy­right to what­ev­er you sub­mit. Your email address or actu­al address will not be giv­en to any­one for any pur­pose at any­time. They will be safe. If the book I ordered does­n’t arrive from Ama­zon the win­ner will receive some­thing else cool instead. If the win­ner has a wish list I might buy some­thing off of it for them. Judg­ing is not arbi­trary and the rea­son­ing for my deci­sion may or may not be expli­cat­ed. I will not make any cash off of this ven­ture or your sub­mis­sions. If I for­got some­thing just pre­tend it is here. My ass is now duly cov­ered.

SUBMISSION

You have to sub­mit via email. Sor­ry. I’m not code-savvy enough to make a func­tion­ing non-email form. You can try using the form below- just know that it will open your default mail client. If you want to send it through web­mail of some sort please send it to:

This form should work. *cross­es fin­gers*

For Inspiration

Last year’s ‘con­test’.
Some­thing from a year before that.
And below you will find a few I’ve writ­ten for this year.

Hip­popota­mus
ver­sus a rhinocer­ous-
don’t get in the way.

Mist off a great lake-
whip­por­whill on the bare branch,
foot­steps on grav­el.

It could be much worse-
that could be your kid up there
screw­ing the White House.

Nose blow too often
cough hack scratchy a sore throat
this haiku is sick.

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