Haiku Contest

Five summiteers participated in this first-ever Poetry Summit haiku writing contest, our most recent catalytic community endeavor:

Casey Nagle (11 entries)
Gabe Kruis (9 entries)
Ryan Weberling (10 entries)
Tom Mazanec (13 entries)
Rob Zandstra (14 entries)

The basic premise of this contest was for each person to write a variety of haiku in response to, as Rob put it, "some of life's deepest, most persistent questions." To that end, we each submitted a list of often bizarre candidate questions, and the cumulative list served as a list of potential titles for our entries. Such a constraint provided a loose (and sometimes very loosely actualized) thematic constraint to match the highly-concentrated formal constraints of the haiku genre. Our mission was thus to "distill the wisdom (and folly) of the entire world and/or our personal opinion on that topic into a mere 17 syllables."

After some holiday delays and a slight whiff of waffling on the part of our usurping poemoderator, Rob Zandstra, I finally gained full and uncut closure this evening. The results of the contest are in, with a fair spread of good poems throughout the group, although it seems that Gabe and Rob came out slightly ahead in the end. It is for them which we enter into raptures and verbalize our approbation.

The contest winners were placed in three separate categories, based on each participants top 10 ranking under each heading: (1) best overall poem, (2) best answer to the title question, and (3) best haiku form. Posted immediately below are the top-ranked poems in each category, followed by the poem, also featured in our second category, which received the most overall points and therefore deserves the blue, 17-pronged ribbon for "Best in Show":

Our “overall” favorite

[Entry #53 by Rob, with 33 points in this category]

Whence everything?

Cattails rise, fish ceaselessly depart;
none can part the waters
without singing

not water striders
not rain
not god

the shallow bluegill
averts the egret’s sudden bill,
but not its silent egress

Best answer to its title question

[Entry #30 by Gabe, with 27 total points in this category]

What can’t we see?

Seeds in concrete
icicles on the eaves
thaw, roots, root hairs

Bridge & waterway
stories of Earth, harp vibrations
the plump rats run.

Puddles ripple down tracks
white stalactites & cracks
in metro plaster.

Best use of haiku form

NOTE: This category resulted in a three-way tie at 21 points between the following entries:

[Entry #19 by Tom]

How long will the human race survive?

Alicia longs
for a bed of copper leaves
upon a trap door

[Entry #46 by Rob]

Is time linear or cyclical?

All the day’s light,
a thin band of color
around earth’s pupil

*

“Best in Show”

This was not a category of voting, but it is an award category for the entry that racked up the most points across the three categories of voting (out of a possible 120). The winner of Best in Show:

[Entry #30 by Gabe, with 62 total points from all three categories]

What can’t we see?

Seeds in concrete
icicles on the eaves
thaw, roots, root hairs

Bridge & waterway
stories of Earth, harp vibrations
the plump rats run.

Puddles ripple down tracks
white stalactites & cracks
in metro plaster.

*

Finally, here are the adjusted overall rankings (compensating for how many submissions each person made) of each poet in each category:

Name: Casey Gabe Ryan Rob Tom

Best overall: 56 74 30 51 30
Best answer: 51 63 45 58 25
Best haiku form: 36 50 54 57 39
Total points: 143 188 129 167 95

If it still seems like a good idea in a few days, I may post some of the runners-up (top 10 or just top 5) in each category.

And last but not least, much thanks to the lovely Rob for completely administrating what I think has been one of the best Poetry Summit contests/events/collaborations thus far.