What to Submit?
1 original, poem on the theme of .............Winter
FORM:
Haibun is a Japanese genre of writing that mixes chiefly autobiographical prose with haiku. The key to the art of haibun is the graceful pairing of poem and prose, where the poem links to the prose yet shifts away from it, in much the same way that verses relate to each other in a renku by leaping. EXAMPLE BELOW
Comrades in Arms
by Debbie Guzzi
In the refrigerated coldness of a courtroom sitting with my truest friend near me, boxed in by bureaucracy who cared not for the long, lingering years of marital decline. The unyielding forms of squares and rectangles, benched, tabled and chaired the end of a lifetime of intercourse. Only one friend had come to my Golgotha, my place of skulls.
a downcast woman
sat before a solemn judge--
the gravel fell
Sedated with mother’s little helpers, we sat, she and I attempting, through chemistry and kindness, to bar the pain of memory, no sour wine laced with myrrh for me. The Judge seeing no sense in the dissolution of a union three decades in the baking, washed his hands of us, my husband and I, like Pilate. As the crown of thorns had encircled the pate of HE, so had the bands of marriage encased us frozen, dead in the honey colored amber .. of we.
The haiku can be first last or in the middle as long as it works with the prose.
LIST THE FORM AS VERSE
Prizes
First -Tenth Glory
Honorable Mentions
Preparing Your Entry
Submit one copy of your poem online. Format your poem. Please make your entry easy to read — no illustrations or fancy fonts.
English Language
Poems should be in English. Poems translated from other languages are not eligible, unless you wrote both the original poem and the translation.
A Note to Poetry Contestants
You are welcome to enter this contest, whether or not you won a prize in one of my previous contests.