 |
The
First
Hoshino Takashi Award
for Haiku: 2003 |
The World Haiku Club is pleased to
announce that the winner of the First Hoshino Takashi Award 2003 (a non-regular
award administered by the Club) is Robert D. Wilson of the USA with the
following haiku:
swallowing
the moon, a hungry
catfish
robert d. wilson
USA/Phillippines
tsuki mo nomu hodo ni uetaru
namazu kana
(Japanese version by ST, same
hereinafter)
The anonymous judging was executed
on Wednesday 05 November 2003 at the Kamakura Kyoshi & Tatsuko Memorial
Museum, Nikaido, Kamakura, Japan by Master Hoshino Takashi, Vice President of
the Tamamo School and Editor of the magazine of the same name. Takashi, who is
great grand son of Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959), gave the following comment on
the winner:
I am delighted that there are so
many interesting haiku entries of great merit in this competition. However, the
award-winning poem stood out as rich in original thinking. The inter-relation
between the changing moonlight and the life of a catfish is depicted with great
skill and imagination. Catfish is a summer kigo and its shape makes it an
amusing subject suitable for haiku. The catfish in this haiku may well be hungry
but it is a reflection of the hunger, figurative or otherwise, felt by the
author him/herself, whatever the cause. This projection of the poet’s emotion
upon the catfish creates a form of a leap of poetic imagination, which has made
it indeed a profound poem. Haiku is the business of us seeking a different kind
of everyday life through depicting the ordinary everyday life. This haiku goes
very deep in that endeavour. Kyoshi wrote a haiku, very drastic and avant-garde
by his own standards, which has a similar sentiment as this Award-winning haiku.
It goes something like: Kappa (an imaginary animal who lives in a pond and plays
tricks on humans) throws himself into the water and tries to be a good human
under the spring moon. The winning poem has a similar element of surprise,
freshness and good sense of humour”
Told afterwards that the winner
was an American haiku poet, a Vietnam veteran, Takashi said, “No wonder. This
haiku must be a reflection of his experience in the Vietnamese war. The power
one feels is overwhelming. A monkey tried to reach the moon in Zen tradition. A
catfish swallowing up the moon is simply extraordinary.”
The Hoshino Takashi Award was
created this year as a major haiku competition of the World Haiku Club,
alongside the R. H. Blyth Award, to celebrate the dissemination of haiku across
the world mainly but not exclusively in accordance with the classical Japanese
tradition of haiku. The Award is not regularly administered (i.e. it is not an
annual event) but it is hoped that it will be conducted as often as possible.
The Hoshino Takashi Award aims at becoming one of the most important of such
awards in the world with the highest possible quality and prestige. -ST
The Two Runners-up:
acorns
hitting the
ground
into the night
shii no mi no daichi wo uchi te yoru shizuka
Tei Matsushita Scott
USA
morning fog
the sound the river makes
when I close my eyes
asa-giri ya waga me tozure ba kawa no oto
Marjorie Buettner
Minnesota, USA
Seven Honorable Mentions (not in order of merit):
spring thaw—
names on the gravestones
reappear
mata bohi no mie-some ni keri yuki-doke ni
Michael Meyerhofer
USA
ripples
in my morning coffee
earthquake country
kohi ni hamon tsukuru ya nai no kuni
Allen McGill
Mexico
country garden
an overweight pumpkin
bends the wire fence
teppei wo assuru hodo no kabocha kana
John Tiong Chunghoo
Malaysia
scarlet leaf
I've become another woman
for my husband
atarashiki onna to nari-shi momiji kana
DW Bender
Florida, USA
haiku notebook—
a recipe for apple cider
noted also on it
saidah no reshipi mo kaku kucho kana
Milosav Doderovic
Serbia and Montenegro
overgrown azaleas
a garden path
leading nowhere
izuku to mo yuki-dokoro naki tsutsuji-michi
Paul Miller
USA
in the stone garden
a single flower blooms—
a camellia
seki-tei ni ichi-rin saki-shi tsubaki kana
Sue Mill
Australia
Other haiku poems of merit
without the Japanese translation:
waning moon
a dream i should have had
when i was young
the late Robert Gibson
USA (This is a tribute to him)
every weed
has a flower
and a name
Helen Ruggieri
USA
early autumn
the audible bustle
of ripening
Ernest J Berry
New Zealand
sun at its zenith
a woodpecker spirals
the tree trunk
an’ya
USA
feeling a chill—
the scarlet maple
spills out of itself
Carol Raisfeld
USA
the soundless flight
of a luna moth...
jade moon
Pamela A. Babusci
USA
a weeping willow
over and under pond surface—
touching each other
Jasminka Nadasik Diordievic
Serbia and Montenegro
slow geese cross
a sepia-shaded moon—
autumn nocturne
Nancy Stewart Smith
USA
aiming pebbles
at the moon in the pond—
father and son
Zhanna P. Rader
USA
with chopped wood
an old man brings
snow in the shed
Zoran Doderovic
Serbia and Montenegro
