Between August and October 2013, a total of 319 haiku and 20 tanka were submitted by 78 authors for this selection. The deadline for entries was October 15, 2013. 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 Fried Schmidt, Brigitte ten Brink and Peter Wißmann. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.
All selected works (37 haiku and 3 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.
The next deadline for the Haiku / Tanka selection
is January 15th, 2014.
Only previously unpublished works can be submitted. No simultaneous submissions.
Since the jury is made up of changing participants, I would like to cordially invite all interested DHG members to participate as a jury member in upcoming selection rounds.
Claudia Brefeld
A haiku that particularly appeals to me
Selected and commented by Fried Schmidt:
writer's block
even in Delphi
cicadas only
Elisabeth Weber Strobel
Admittedly, it was not easy for me to present these three lines as my personal best-of-haiku of the present selection. As a self-confessed representative of the "pure teaching of the 17 syllables", a shorter text must impress me to get the full number of points. In addition, the jury was once again spoiled for choice to find out the primus inter pares from the plethora of submissions, often with only nuances.
But: Again and again we are lucky enough to find a haiku that we like at first glance, so emotionally, unconsciously, from the gut - and then, with increasing analysis, but a little faded, the brilliance of the unique and loses new ones.
In this case it is different: the first impression was not deceptive, even after the tenth, twelfth reading the haiku does not become weaker. On the contrary, it is gaining depth. A great picture in 6 simple words. Not a syllable too much. What should you change?
writer's block
The Halloween of all writers. Sitting in front of a white sheet of night, red wine and cigarettes. Restless walking between desk, kitchen and wastebasket. Weeks full of doubt, hope and doubt. The horror has many faces.
even in Delphi
The even has finally convinced me. Escape from writer's block - a spectacular change of location should help. Delphi. The classic place for inspiration. The center of the world on Parnassus, home of the muses, especially poetry. A familiar Greek landscape, filled with memories of successful texts. If not here, where else can the spell be broken?
cicadas only
But even here, despite the fantastic panorama and the reminiscences of better times, no more creative thoughts are free. The cicadas remain cicadas and, as a banal word of the season for a summer vacation, ultimately a symbol of failure. Bonjour, dreary when you can't remember Delphi. , , Pure writer's block.
The topic can hardly be implemented more vividly. Form and content correspond. The brevity and the use of everyday terms in this haiku skillfully reflect the poet's continuing linguistic impoverishment, his literary silence. Cicadas only.
So there are also 17 syllables. , ,
Selected and commented by Brigitte ten Brink:
there is the time
cog and balance
from the structure
Sylvia Bacher
I read this haiku and my first thought is, why is there time? And then it becomes clear to me that the term "time" is also used in this haiku as a synonym for "clock".
The mechanism of the watch, "cog and balance", has "gotten out of hand", in other words, the watch is broken.
My second thought is that time exists and still surrounds me, even if this one clock no longer works.
The words echo in me. I read again and not only see the damaged clock in front of me, I feel confronted with the subject of "time", in all its complexity, precisely because the first haiku line does not read 'the clock is broken', which also means the syllable number Scheme would have fit, but for a good haiku would undoubtedly have been too unimaginative, superficial and one-dimensional, but "there is the time". This is much more exciting and goes far beyond the fact that the watch is broken.
Time connects the concrete moment and the things that are in it with the past, the future and the world and also the clock is assigned a place in this structure. In the age of digitization, this way of displaying the time is almost old-fashioned and so the time lies in front of me like in a museum and also looks a bit like thrown away. "There is time", like so much that is no longer used because it needs to be repaired or because technology, further development has progressed and "better" products have been created. What is the value of time? How do we deal with time? Do we use them? Do we let them pass? An important question with regard to climate change and the development and utilization of renewable energies. How important is time in our CVs, what do we assign to them? Everyone has their own individual answers to these questions and in this sense “time” is also an individual phenomenon. Everyone has their special relationship to time and their understanding of time and uses it accordingly.
But all of these are only partial aspects. It seems more important to me that time per se is the subject of this haiku. For me, this idea is hidden behind the concrete image of the inoperative clock. The watch can no longer fulfill its task of displaying the time and therefore more than just the watch gets out of balance. What if the time is no longer visible, no longer offers orientation, can no longer provide an overview of before, after, here and now? What happens when the clock gets out of joint and maybe even ceases to exist, as a physical unit, as a philosophical phenomenon and as a psychological perceptual dimension? Is there emptiness or chaos then? In my imagination, not only do things melt away, like the clocks in Dali's painting “The Flowing Time”. All being loses its structure and meaning.
This haiku combines different, specific meanings of the concept of time with the time superior to all existences and appearances. The time that we can determine on the one hand, can be viewed and used and that we are delivered on the other hand and which we have not yet fully grasped as the fourth dimension.
The abstract concept of “time” is juxtaposed with the mechanical, technically tangible components of the clock, the cog and the balance wheel, and the interweaving of the clear, tangible reality and the non-real reality makes it clear at the same time.
This haiku is a snapshot in a few words that puts a specific event (broken clock) in a larger context (time) and thus allows a view of the all-encompassing.
Selected and commented by Peter Wißmann:
get out kruispunt
regulate
the silence
abandoned intersection
Regulate traffic lights
the silence
Marian Poyck
A strong image that is evoked in this haiku with just under 13 syllables. A junction, I think of it on a country road, on a Sunday morning, maybe an autumn morning. Light mist that blurs the meadows to the right and left as well as the defoliated trees in the background. It is quiet. The peaceful scene gets by without any human personnel, and yet the human being is present in it. Traffic lights, created by humans and placed there, stand at the intersection and continuously give green, yellow and red signals. They regulate traffic that doesn't even exist or, as it is called in haiku: they regulate silence. Of course, the silence does not need traffic lights and of course it does not have to and cannot be regulated. Doing the traffic lights is superfluous and absurd. It refers to people who, in the form of their 'creatures' - the traffic lights - do not stop wanting to regulate something where there is nothing to regulate. It only takes 7 syllables - 'traffic lights regulate the silence' - and a short introduction - 'abandoned intersection' - to create this image and these associations. This is what a successful haiku looks like to me.
The selection
Hospital window
at three-thirty comes quietly
the moon visiting.
Johannes ancestor
there is the time
cog and balance
from the structure
Sylvia Bacher
in the spider web
get caught - take a deep breath -
just a feather
Sylvia Bacher
to the rain music
the windscreen wipers
not in time
Sylvia Bacher
Tango -
between the cheeks
no more lies
Gerd Borner
mountain path
A stone rolls
down to the clouds
Pure Bonack
MRI schedule
defeat in the golden leaf
you cancer again
Ralf Broker
The day is breaking -
I open the door
against the wind
Horst Oliver Buchholz
Good night song -
the earth sways
deeper and deeper into the blue
Frank Dietrich
after the fireworks
the firework
the Stars
Frank Dietrich
Menopause -
in empty nests
snow is falling
Frank Dietrich
late rendezvous -
the cat licks itself
Shine in the fur
Gerda Forester
immobilizer
between wheel and fender
a spider web
Hans-Jürgen Goehrung
Blackbird singing
early in the morning on the roof ridge -
the black muezzin
Erika Hanning
Morning rain -
dripping from the bamboo
the Sunday silence
Erika Hanning
Thanksgiving
he continues to work ...
the sickle man
Angelica Holweger
warm milk
a pot full
battered stories
Use Jacobson
Bracket morning haze.
Nudibranchs on the way to
Hall of the Buddha
Markus Jansen
old beer garden -
blowing over the wall
White elderberry
Silvia Kempen
at the end of the day
the smell
of a lime leaf
Eva Limbach
morning Calm
just a rooster cry away
Eva Limbach
separated
the star Sky
dissolves
Ramona Left
Virus quick test -
reality
changes color
Ramona Left
Twenty kilograms
lose weight per week
plum harvest
Dietmar Naescher
Autumn
Gets the year
Age spots
Eleanor Nickolay
get out kruispunt
regulate
the silence
abandoned intersection
Regulate traffic lights
the silence
Marian Poyck
First snowflakes
melt on the tongues
like on the asphalt.
Wolfgang Roedig
Visit to the home.
She tells the children
a strange life
Boris Semrov
flea market
spread out in front of me
my youth
Boris Semrov
English lawn
Bees search in vain
the meadow of yore
Monica Smollich
autumn afternoon
in the gaps of the wind
Mother's voice
Dietmar Tauchner
sometime at night
become my thoughts
to crickets singing
Dietmar Tauchner
first autumn storm
i put my bike
to the chain
Elisabeth Weber Strobel
strange sounds
away from the house
that nobody wanted to buy
Elisabeth Weber Strobel
writer's block
even in Delphie
cicadas only
Elisabeth Weber Strobel
... never lead
through spring or autumn
Metro rails
Klaus-Dieter Wirth
"Fate Symphony"
from the seat next door
Mothball smell
Klaus-Dieter Wirth
After the flood.
Grandma's house again
renovate. -
None of us will
ever live here.
Tony Bohle
At two with you
meeting in the café,
I mean
Clock back ten minutes. -
Yes, you are perfect for me!
Tony Bohle
the sunflowers
accompany the night train
bowing
with open eyes
let's go into the night
Dragan J. Ristic
