Haiku Awards

10th Yamadera Bashō Memorial Museum
English Haiku Contest – Guidelines for Submission

Guideline for the haiku contest

1. Conditions for submission
Only unpublished English haiku poems are eligible for submission.
Each applicant may submit up to two poems. A Japanese translation should be included with each poem when possible, but non-Japanese applicants are not required to attach a translation.
2. Judging
An initial screening will select haiku to be printed in the Haiku Submission Collection.
A second screening will determine prize winners from among these selected works.
The judging panel will consist of Takehisa Iijima (President of the International Association of Japanese Studies, Professor Emeritus of Yamagata University), Shuichiro Souma (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yamagata City Culture Foundation), Noboru Oba (10th English Haiku Contest Executive Committee President, former President of the Yamagata Prefecture English Education Research Association), Joe Maricoji (poet and critic) and Lisa Somers (translator, Yamagata University part-time instructor).
3. Divisions
  1. (1) Division One: general public
    • (a) Japanese applicants
    • (b) Non-Japanese applicants
  2. (2) Division Two : high school students
  3. (3) Division Three: junior high school students
4. Application procedure
Haiku submissions may be submitted by post, email, or fax. Applicants are requested to give their division, name, age and sex (optional), nationality, and contact information (address, phone number, email address).
Age, sex, and contact information will not be made public. Junior and senior high school students should include their school name and grade, and Japanese applicants are asked to give the phonetic reading of their name.
5. Participation fee
None
6. Deadline
Applications will be accepted from April 2, 2018 to June 2, 2018.
7. Submissions
Haiku submissions and inquiries may be sent by post, fax, or email to: Yamadera Bashō Memorial Museum, English Haiku Contest
4223 Nanin Yamadera, Yamagata-shi, Yamagata-ken, 999-3301 JAPAN
Tel: (0)23-695-2221
Fax: (0)23-695-2552
e-mail address: bashoenglish-haiku@amail.plala.or.jp
8. Prizes
In each division, one grand prize and two distinguished work prizes will be awarded.Recipients will receive a certificate printed in both English and Japanese.
9. Announcement of judging results
Prize winners will be directly notified by the museum, and prize-winning haiku poems and the haiku submission collection will be displayed on the Yamadera Bashō Memorial Museum website by the end of July, 2018.
*Haiku submissions and applicant names may be printed in the Haiku Submission Collection, displayed on the museum website, and otherwise made public. To ensure easy understandability, any unintentional spelling mistakes found in haiku submissions will be corrected by museum staff.