Japan Fair Haiku Contest Submission

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I entered a haiku contest.

I don't have much experience writing haiku or poetry more broadly, but I do have a long-time love affair with clever wordplay[1].

So, I gave it my best shot! I spent a week jotting down ideas and reading through haiku: both popular works and previous contest submissions.

We were allowed to submit two haiku. Here's what I submitted:

Submission 1

phase through hands
in time with the budding chorus
we both drop

Submission 2

dawn flips the "open" sign
first in line for the first tomatoes;
sunrise on the vine

Curious why these don't fit the 5-7-5 format? More below[2]

It was a fulfilling and challenging exercise! The first submission in particular, I felt like I drafted so many different variations of each line: altering word choice, syllable count, meter, seasonal references, and poetic turns.

After drafting and re-drafting, I was basically down to two candidates: what I submitted above and this alternate that I left on the cutting room floor.

Submission 1: original

phase through swarming flesh
strike earth! ring drowns out chorus
stars bloom above me

There was a lot that I liked in this original form:

  1. It followed the (admittedly unnecessary) 5-7-5 pattern.
  2. The word choice had a bit more grime and violence which better fit the original spirit of the poem.
  3. I liked the double entendre of the final line.

Ultimately, I went with the variation I submitted because I felt its terseness better fit the tone and style of haiku. And while I loved using words like "flesh", "swarming", and "strike", the more I read both variations out loud to myself, the more I felt the meter of the original was a bit clumsy: words felt absent out of necessity to fit the 5-7-5 pattern and the rhythm of the words I left behind didn't really flow.

I think I made the right choice. I get the sense that, for haiku, there's value in celebrating shorter moments. The submitted poem narrowed the scope and left more to the imagination of its outcomes. The abandoned original described more of a narrative and got lost trying to fit in my pet favorite phrases.

I'm excited to see which submissions get selected!

Footnotes

[1] Most of my "wordplay itch" is scratched by music. For some of my favorite lyricists, check out the bands mewithoutYou, La Dispute, and Secret Band
[2] The contest I was submitting to explicitly allowed/encouraged poems to deviate beyond the 5-7-5 form. It seems broadly felt that the 5-7-5 restriction is a misunderstanding of the original Japanese form and that there are other elements which play a much stronger role in making something a haiku: seasonal references, juxtaposition, and kireji.