Between August and October 2011, a total of 226 haiku and 15 tanka were submitted by 54 authors for this selection. The deadline for entries was October 15, 2011. Each participant could send in up to 5 haiku or tanka.
These works were anonymized by Claudia Brefeld, who also had the overall coordination, before the selection began. The jury consisted of Dirk-Uwe Becker, Georges Hartmann and Gitta Hofrichter. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.
All selected works (33 haiku and 5 tanka) are listed below alphabetically by author's name - up to max. three works per author.
“A haiku / a tanka that appeals to me in particular” - under this motto, every jury member has the opportunity to choose a work (still anonymized), present it here and comment on it.
Claudia Brefeld
A haiku that particularly appeals to me
Selected and commented by Dirk-Uwe Becker:
Morning mist -
Go under fishing boats
the silence
Absolutely formative rhythm, the mystique of the first line is exaggerated by the last line.
The day has not really awakened yet, fog (shaping), blurred beings from another world pass through the twilight before they indulge in daytime sleep on the water surface.
Man penetrates this mystery with his fishing boats. But by not simply driving through this mystical silence and thereby (destroying) it, but only “going under” it, he does not break the mystery open - he lets it exist, glides past it as if in a parallel world. Coming out of life, past the foggy realm similar to death, he comes back into life.
This picture reminds me very much of the legend about King Arthur and Avalon, the mist-covered island to which the dying king was brought in a boat. From life to death.
Selected and commented by Gitta Hofrichter:
Sudoku
a peacock eye sits down
on the east
“Oh”,… natural wonder lands in the Japanese logic puzzle Sudoku - short for Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru - which means “isolate the numbers” has become one of the most popular number puzzles in recent years. Summertime, I sit on the terrace hunched over square fields that are to be filled with numbers. Pass the time ... And just at this moment a noble butterfly hovers silently, 'winks' its wings, sits down on the black and white boxes to unfold all its colors. A blue colored eye spot, which is reminiscent of the peacock feather and stands for the O in the butterfly alphabet, covers the O from Sudoku of all things. Look how beautiful I am, the natural wonder wants to tell me, while my eyes slowly glide along the fascinating shimmering drawings on his wings. Immerse yourself in the world of butterflies, feel lightness for a moment. For this I like to push the abstract world of numbers aside. For me, the modern haiku creates a reverberant image in the concrete description of the moment in the contrast of nature and logic in the rhythm of short-long-short and how nice that it was a peacock's eye and not a lemon butterfly.
Selected and commented by Georges Hartmann:
Morning toilet
a few teeth are missing
in the old crest
Haiku No. 144, the blockbuster before the break tea or something completely different?
The readers would like to read all the haiku that have been sent in, which then tortures the editors and the jury alike, because the majority of the works do not open up even with the best will in the world, or the texts do not cause any emotion when reading, because they are simply too banal, too constructed are overloaded etc. Anyone who has ever sat on the haiku jury, cheerfully scored points in the first round and then realized in the second round that the other two came to a completely different result in some texts than you know, too judging is no easy task and you like to throw the shotgun in the grain when the other two use strong arguments to point out that you actually only gave quark yourself. In pubs you can hear that someone is drunk nicely by force at an advanced hour. With a haiku, this usually doesn't work. The situation remains confusing because haiku are often a question of taste and understanding and at least 40% of these criteria are included in the evaluation. After all the pros and cons, I rated this haiku with 3 out of 5 possible points. It was not an easy path for me. If you want, I invite you to follow my thoughts on the roller coaster ... ..
The haiku is one to which I initially react thoughtfully, because the picture is also quite suitable to become aware of your own aging and the quirkiness associated with it, or even its certain stubbornness in old age, so as not to use any other conceivable terms. Someone combs with an old comb, which is still considered useful because only a few teeth are missing and the functionality of the otherwise faultless device is not particularly restricted. But: is it a protest haiku against the throw-away society or one who wants to show the plight of people living on the subsistence level who just can't afford anything else? Is it a depression haiku that should only make you sad and arouse our compassion? Or is it more of a humorous, self-deprecating character or one in which an image that has already been described too often is taken up to also outline the voice of the other jurors? The scenario of aging, hanging on to the usual things, behavior that is mostly emphasized with a "still works" seems to me most likely. I am undecided, maybe also because I do not try a comb, but usually try to smooth the hair with my hands if I can't find the brush again, but the age-old training pants with the hole at the knee at no cost hit the bin because, in my view, it is still completely ok for "home" or the "garden". The problem seems familiar to me, but without wanting to see myself as a Clochard. The haiku has this touch of melancholy, which is also very much appreciated by me, but which is only conveyed to me superficially, because after repeated reading, I repeatedly fall into the trap of giving the text a completely different twist. While I already landed at Haiku No. 145 with this thought, the cent piece suddenly slips through my brain passages ... ..
Housewives usually have at least one trick up their sleeves if the food is lightly salted or if the cream doesn't want to be really stiff despite the hot blender. Readers often come up with ideas that may go the opposite way: catapulting something perfectly passable with a nasty twist into the absurd. As I ponder this, the thought strikes me that this text allows two readings and that a pinch of laughter could be imparted in the blink of an eye, although I am almost certain that my subsequent interpretation will only provoke a stunned shake of the head by the author. Perhaps you have already asked for the headline, for what reasons this text is commented on in such a lengthy manner, because basically there is no hair in the soup. I think because there are a lot of problems with it, but I don't know if I am right and it would be important to hear the opinion of the readers.
So what, in my view, is the catch that goes beyond the content of this haiku? Let me read it briefly again:
Morning toilet
a few teeth are missing
You should simply take up the text up to this state of affairs and let it melt on your tongue in the second breathing space, which has now been deliberately set. At least I am thinking of the description of a previous night's tavern wedge, which we should cliché in Bavaria, from where such stories have been reported again and again, at least from another century, where they corresponded to the mentality, often with scratches and major injuries , however, according to the chroniclers, were mostly settled amicably afterwards. And if you now register at least a small twitch of the corner of your mouth, the intended purpose is fulfilled. Your attention should draw attention to the dangers of choosing words (combs, to my knowledge, have teeth and show no teeth) and the possibility of a wrong interpretation when reading aloud, which sometimes puts a haiku in the field of comedy and through the last line then it can hardly be saved because the reader registers the word comb after a possible smile, but in his head it may not be possible to make a U-turn that something completely different from a joke was intended, although I appreciate the humorous fastg even more than those with a certain sadness.
"Oh," you will now say and be disappointed, or at least for the sake of the effect, feel a little cheerfulness in yourself, or get annoyed that I went down on the glue and protested: "How a haiku suddenly stands when you oppose it deliberately misread better knowledge. "
The misery I may have worked out completely wrongly can also lead to two different types of reading due to the lack of punctuation, if no intention is assumed to want to read it as violently as I did. But that is also a controversial topic in haiku circles. Uppercase or lowercase, period or comma or not, everything is being tested. A change in lines 2 and 3 could also help to avoid the risk of dodging, although I do not know to what extent haiku purists would agree, because this will already anticipate the element of surprise, even if I have the morning toilet next to the ones already mentioned "Teeth" (which of course I understand, of course, in spite of the objection made above, that of the comb), apart from the comb, at most a denture lying in a glass of water should come in, which should not do justice to the haiku either ... How many points would have Which motives would you award if you had sat on the jury?
The selection
Bach
the organ groans
in the joints
Flowering hedge -
my shadow is bathing
in the fragrance
thick clouds
push south
an aster blue
Snow storm ...
we sting the time
from the dough
in the office
the password
at the beach
autumn storm -
the orderly smell
of the wood pile
Farewell.
One last look back -
Silver poplars in the wind
early morning
another train pulls you
indent
Beach restaurant.
Dismembered in the many windows
Ocean.
Mountain birds.
We climb to the clouds
down.
bunker remains
In the shade of tall pine trees
men play boules
autumn spider
moves silently
der Nebel
Morning mist -
Go under fishing boats
the silence
Sudoku -
a peacock eye sits down
on the east
Dawn.
The first picture of the day
Almost without color.
A bed of paper
found the cat for her litter,
Destroyed lyrics
Post-summer ...
lives in her smile
the silence
on the piano
spring stumbles
at the high c
thistles
widens in his eyes
the sky
in the men's salon
the chirping of the scissors
- otherwise silence
Morning toilet
a few teeth are missing
in the old crest
foehn weather -
the Snowman
not in shape
Emergency exit -
over the big city
the blue sky
dark roses -
the smile matches our silence
Abendamsellied -
we draw water
from the old barge
reunions
the familiar voices
the stranger
over the fog
the castle - father wants to know
who I am
In the barren
a branch fork
remained a bird's nest
In the autumn wind
Waiting for mail
No leaf is from you
From chestnuts
she puts a heart in the sand
The newlyweds are waiting
quiet country
a swarm of thrushes
calligraphed
into gray
af en toe een glimpse
Tussen de stack clouds door
van knowing light
now and then a glimmer
between heap clouds -
changing light
at the last moment
lengthen the step -
a ground beetle
under clouds
south
the V
pushes the duck
across the pond
Martinmas
Children with lanterns
sing songs
The old man at the table
arranges his long life
uphill ...
the warm smooth boulder
berühren
where two once stayed
autumn wind drives through the dry grass
A clear autumn day
in the reflection of the river -
we should travel
you tell me jokingly
we think of the same thing
Distant peaks
in shimmering red
der Mond
and the two on the bench
don't want to separate
