Chantal Lyons, one of our writers-in-residence created a haiku challenge, in which she invited Bsky Social “skeeters” to bring a wild or wild-ish place into being!
What’s was the prize? Chantal and two other Wainwright Prize nominee authors, Polly Atkin and Sophie Yeo who were Chantal’s guests at an online Salon (video recording of the event here) on Tuesday 7 January, selected the winning haiku, and with the help of their book publishers, a copy of one of their titles was awarded as a prize to 7 winners!
And the winning haiku are:
I've been called barren
Like bogs. Yet here we both are:
Fecund. Sundew-kissed.
@spinetingling.bsky.social
Red flesh torn open
Rosehip winter sacrifice
To hungry bird beaks
@scotika.bsky.social
I saw it vanish
A white tuft, into the bush.
The c of muntjac.
@poetryid.bsky.social
To inhale a tree
the wind tumbles down the hill
some sorts of falling
@khuangwrites.bsky.social
Woodpecker drummer
secret message for our ears
singing with the trees
@fredowl.bsky.social
Barn owl, gilded in
lowering sunlight, pounces;
Winter grass rustles.
@wellmanneredxs.bsky.social
breathing in the spring,
the forest in the morning
pine scent and wet leaves
@jotter111.bsky.social
So what did you have to do, precisely? Compose a haiku, and post it to the Bluesky social platform with the #hashtag #wlchaiku, and follow @walklistencreate – it was that simple.
So what is a haiku anyway? Aha! Originally Japanese, painted characters on scrolls, haiku included encoded messages to the readers about the natural surroundings the composer found themselves in. Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) was a walking poet and Buddhist monk who painted a haiku for almost everyday he walked. The featured image is a reading of his: “Quietly, quietly, / yellow mountain roses fall – / sound of the rapids“. His poetry has been memorialised all over Japan. Following the Second World War, artists and poets on the west coast of the US and Canada reached out to their former enemies inviting them to share haiku. The western version of haiku stemmed from those early collaborations. People these days have even suggested they were the forerunners to texting emojis or Skeets and posts on social media.
School children are often encouraged to compose haiku as a simple way to introduce them to the power of poetry to convey feelings and experiences. School teachers quickly enforced a specific pattern of 5-7-5 syllables for a 3 line haiku. However, haiku-ists like to break rules, and frequently haikus don’t keep to this rule.
A big thank you to the publishers of all four books, Bloomsbury Nature, Elliot & Thompson, Harper North, and Sceptre, from these three terrific authors, for the offer of their books as prizes.
Join a Walking Writers’ Salon and Sign up to our weekly newsletter to be the first to know when we are running further haiku and writing challenges.
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