Hi lit-lovelies,
Inspired by the Vintage Books Easter Twitter haiku comp in which I won a copy of Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade (score!), I thought it would be much fun to hold a little haiku comp of my own.
The rules:
1. Write a haiku (the wiki entry explains the form quite well if you’re stumped) which features an unusual or uncommon word. Something like costermonger, rasp, hyetal – you get the point. Make it fun, light, poignant, sexy, whatever – be creative, have fun and broaden your vocabulary.
2. Either tweet your creation on Twitter, tagging it @LiteraryMinded and/or #LMhaikucomp (I’ll check both for entries); or post it as a comment on this blog post (if you’re not signed up, just a name and email is required). Do this by midnight next Saturday the 25th of April (AEST). I will announce the winner on Sunday the 26th. You can enter as many times as you like. Get some inspiration from Cordite‘s Haikunaut Renga 1 and Haiku for People.
The prizes:
1st prize:
1 copy of Wet Ink issue 14, featuring my short story ‘Birds’
1 copy of The Death Mook, featuring my essay ‘Express or Die?’
1 copy of The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow by AJ Mackinnon (Black Inc.)
+ I’ll throw in some zines and other goodies
2nd prize:
Back issues of Australian literary journals Page Seventeen, Meanjin, and Going Down Swinging
Have fun! Here’s the Easter haiku that won me the Vintage Books comp, in case you were wondering:
restless awaiting
tongue-theft of cocoa melt this
sun-blessed weekend
LiteraryMinded 
Logorrhea: noun,
writerly disease, cured by
death and the haiku.
Manchurian Pear:
ornamental, barren. Leaves,
its footpath orphans.
Heidegger on the
3.10 Lilydale express.
Ekphanestaton.
under moonsoaked sheets
her gentle lycanthropy
leaves my heart gasping
‘why why why?’ I sob
upon her triple word square
spelling ‘syzygy’
A cursory glance
at her décolletage-gasp!
and her fiancé.
“Urgle-burgle goo,”
and fontanelle’s hairline pulse:
my baby music.
Low Autumn sunlight,
musses my son’s Einstein curls.
(It’s not relative.)
eunonyhareenyha
Wiradjuri emu plain
the dry has begun
at Melbourne Zoo
the statue of Peter Pan
that Mzuri grew up so fast
i know, syllable count… hmm… ah fudge it…
Get me off Facebook
prodigaliser of hours
it’s just pathetic
enticing readers
to sign up and comment
adroit woman
‘Right. It is Supercal-
ifragilisticexpi-
alidocious!’
chock full of claver
forgotten iPod
this tram trip will never end
my damsel fissions:
“Damn selfish! You bought a what!??”
…damselfish in tank..?
Mum is shrinking, in
old photos she’s a poplar,
now a baobab
Vic Market, where a
pavonine barracuda
gasp-flops silently
I’m a curmudgeon
So apologies all round
I don’t do haiku
I know this comes both i.) too late (as of 12:30am), and ii.) in deference to the editorial guidelines requesting for unusual or esoteric language, but I experienced so much unprecedented joy from composing the following suite of wee-hour haikus, that I reasoned I’d ostensibly share these, nonetheless: enjoy!
Electricity:
a strobing head, a cut lip
My blood gloves his fist.
They hug me once as
pillows of breath are wrestled
from my lungs: farewell.
Cities capture light
and reflect them back on streets
slick with midnight rain.
Through the winter he
watches from his register:
I greet him for smokes.
Moon suspended as
she smiles into her scarf and
replaces her phone.
Wolves whine at my door –
On the beach, they chase waves and
devour turtle eggs.
I write, knowing a
succession of dead poets
expect something grand.
He is heartbroken.
She is not. She is waiting.
He is years behind.
She lies amidst reeds:
her nude back is bruised where the
ladybirds collect.
Fog hugs the king’s legs
as he forges through bracken:
a fox turns to watch.
Kirk, thanks for sharing anyway, I’ll just exclude them from the judging. I’m going to make this a regular thing so definitely look out for the next one.
Before I judge, I’ll post here the ones entered via Twitter so you can all see them. If there were no / to mark line breaks I had to guess a little, and I’ve retained punctuation where it existed.
@totallykiller
Windows crashed again
It’s time to switch my O/S
Defenestration
@samuelcooney
Vic Market where a
pavonine barracuda
gasp-flops silently
@samuelcooney
Mum is shrinking, in
old photos she’s a poplar,
now a baobab
@samuelcooney
my damsel fissions:
“Damn selfish! You bought a what!??”
…damselfish in tank..?
@samuelcooney
chock full of claver
forgotten iPod this tram
trip will never end
@samuelcooney
‘Right. It is Supercal-
ifragilisticexpi-
alidocious!’
@HillsJohnes
Watch as I,
grandiloquently,
ostentate.
@ThatWriter
Amaranthine:
my love, molecules, words,
not your beauty.
@mizminh
brown alchemy
sly suggestions of yellow
daffadowndilly bulbs
@compulsivereade
ten amino acids
phylogenetic alien
one intake of breath
@ziz
the penumbra cuts
a world of light and dark sides
severed by shadow
@ziz
blue cheese and red wine
sialogogues so sublime
mouth watering nosh