Between August and October 2014, a total of 300 haiku and 11 tanka were submitted by 71 authors for this selection. The deadline for entries was October 15, 2014. Each participant could send in up to 5 haiku or tanka.
These texts were anonymized by me before the selection began.
The jury consisted of Birgit Schaldach-Helmlechner, Gabriele Brunsch and Birgit Heid. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.
All selected texts (47 haiku and 1 tanka) are listed alphabetically by author's name - up to max. three works per author.
“A haiku / a tanka that particularly appeals to me” - under this motto, each jury member has the opportunity to choose one or up to three texts (still anonymized), present them here and comment on them.

The next deadline for the Haiku / Tanka selection
is January 15th, 2015.

Only previously unpublished works can be submitted. No simultaneous submissions. Please send the submissions in the mail body, no attached files.
Please send to:
Wahlen@deutschehaikugesellschaft.de

Since the jury should consist of changing participants, I would like to cordially invite all interested DHG members to participate as a jury member in upcoming selection rounds. It's fun and you learn a lot.

Petra Klingl

A haiku that particularly appeals to me

Blue light
Throw paving stones
Shadow

Hans Jürgen Goehrung

Even the term “blue light” leads the reader to the drama of an emergency in a matter of seconds. There are also seconds that can be critical in such a situation. An approaching blue light bathes the surroundings in an unreal light, especially in the dark. It also gives those uninvolved guessing that besides the usual life there is also a possibility of existence under extremely difficult and dramatic conditions.
For reasons of sure-footedness, paving stones usually only rise insignificantly from the ground, which means that the joints are about one centimeter below the surface of the paving stones.
For me, if only small elevations cast shadows, it means that your eyes are close. I guess from the wording that someone is lying on the street when the flashing lights come on. A toddler might also discover that paving stones cast small shadows, but the dense choice of words and the combination with the word "flashing light" gives me little other option than to assume that someone has had an accident or that their health is acute Danger and the paramedics are coming at that moment. The two pictures fit together!
In the observation that paving stones cast shadows, the person affected may be briefly distracted from the painful situation, the small paving stone shadows become as important as the shadow that has come over the people in need.
Thus, through my reading and my reflection, the impression of an acute emergency changes into a feeling of gratitude towards the arriving paramedics, towards a health system that gives you the justified hope of medical help.
Selected and commented by Birgit Heid

silent post
what do the old people know
of love

Gabriele Hartman

There it is again, the whisper chain from childhood. What the last person in the row of tussels says aloud has little to do with the original message, but it does cause laughter long before the original is compared. I like to give in here with a smile to my mental play instinct. A harmless variant that could arise from the quiet transport of the words from the second and third lines should suffice: the pillows slam in front of beautiful thieves. While (younger) children still dare to trumpet such sentence structures uncensored, adults generally try to fill in the incomplete, where something was not exactly understood, with their own wealth of experience. There may already be an oil trail in the rumor mill. It should be briefly mentioned here because it also shows the need for communication and the desire for belonging. What do the elderly already know ... if I dare to generalize, puberty affects all parents. Suddenly they are embarrassing, set stupid rules, are hillbillies who have no idea what is going on and should therefore keep out of everything. Hormone releases and reconstruction measures in the various brain rooms herald a new beginning. Moving away from previously valid views also means going on a search to find your own. The fact that communication partners outside the family come first in this way does not differ from the demarcation behavior from earlier times. However, the possibilities of creating relationships via network communication are changing rapidly. WhatsApp, posting, blogging, tweeting, Chatiquette, Avatar etc ... I can't keep up with that. Nostalgia - today you are welcome to put the stamp on an old man like me, to pound behind the current status, that doesn't mean that I lead an offline life. In my youth, the only phone in the house had a permanent place in the hallway. No place for whispering love or great secrecy. I preferred to move three streets away. Behind the glass walls of the public telephone booth I sent my first kisses and vows into the receiver, breathed on the windows, painted hearts and wrote our names on them, had his words, his voice, every laugh, wistful sighs in my ears ... Modern flirtations are already beginning sometimes with gentle strokes on the touchscreen. The silent post of chats uses symbols, abbreviations, inflective, encrypted expressions of emotion. A language that the user has to learn if he wants to belong. Perhaps an incomprehensible mutilation in the eyes of "the old", but there can be no question of irregularity. Misunderstandings, hoax, wrong word, as in conversation vis à vis, sigh, everything human. It takes exchange, friction, clarification. Hopefully the right receiver antennas are online in the virtual circle of friends - when fib no longer have a landing place and a dsh pile of misery urgently needs consolation. Hopefully, those who listen live, hug them, who understand how it feels, because they have experienced it themselves and because nothing has changed about it, the abysmal sadness when love goes ... A strong, quiet haiku that describes the constant cycle in the face of the challenges of change. It seems like an eternity ago, since grandmother said: "Just wait and see, you get there all by yourself." Wherever, it goes on.
Selected and commented by Birgit Schaldach-Helmlechner

unemployed…
in my house
a tiger
Heike Gericke

Everything is simple and concise. Three lines, six words.
With the opening: unemployed ... and the points behind it, a chapter in the life story is opened, which gives room for a wide range of interpretations. Everyone knows the word, knows what it means, but not everyone has personally experienced what it means to be in this state. The word and the following do not say anything about whether the condition has lasted for some time. We find out nothing about the reasons why this happened. However, if we fail to put ourselves in this state, then we will not be able to absorb the full weight and meaning of this small, nondescript haiku.
Unemployed… The initial hope of finding a good job soon has faded. The pride that one did not want to give up, that one wanted work at the level that he owed himself, it had been argued, was mutated first to discouragement, but then to aggression. Aggression against yourself, against the world and against everyone around you.
Restlessness and zest for action, mixed with anger, sadness and resignation are an uneasy confusion of feelings that make people unbearable for themselves and the environment. This restlessness and need for the soul, the constant self-doubt, the fear of not being able to offer the family what it was used to, the need to recognize that one was about to fail, that one was moving away from oneself, becoming weak, contemptible , evil…
in my house indicates that it is the scribe in whose house a person lives who has turned into a tiger in the state of unemployment. There he is, the tiger, who, like Rilke's Panther, may move uneasily, wandering the room, gazing into the void, and yet being alert, nervous and threatening. What used to be seen as a problem now leads to serious arguments, the tone of voice is sometimes violent and hurtful.
While the possibilities of interpretation expand, the haiku remains simple and concise, if not to say matter-of-factly. There is nothing but this forced condition that makes my house a cage in which a wild animal is now locked up - with me and by my side.

Bedridden -
to the beat of the wind
the dance of the trees

Eleanor Nickolay

A fourteen-syllable haiku that immediately appealed to me in several ways. It appeals to my musicality, my feeling for rhythm, music and rhythm. Forced to lie in bed, for whatever reason, the oppressive boredom, the emptiness, the inability to get up, perhaps forced immobility. You turn your head to the side and look out of the window, where suddenly a special spectacle takes place, which only opens up after a while.
You can see the trees swinging in front of the window, you can see them leaning and going up again, the branches, the branches. Your cradles and swings, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker ...
And suddenly you recognize a rhythm, a repetition that takes place in the same pattern and you are tempted to clap and count the beats. You know that the wind sets the pace, that it conducts the dance of the trees - and suddenly the time dissolves and you seem absorbed by this moving game in front of the window. There is nothing mysterious about this haiku, everything is clearly and clearly expressed, and yet it is precisely this rhythmic repetition, which contains a multitude of repetitions and perhaps also modifications, that is the attraction for me, because I feel this swing as I do takes hold, I see leaves swirling, feel marginalized in an autumn that is accompanied by storm and wind and feel equally invited by nature to forget my unnatural state of bedriddenness and to dance with my thoughts despite the adverse circumstances ,
Selected and commented by Gabriele Brunsch

The selection

overland journey
I pick meadow flowers
mit den augen

Sylvia Bacher

Halloween
the ghosts rumble
in its infancy

Christa Beau

A piece of heaven
separates from the sky in the pond -
dragonfly blue

Pure Bonack

grandfather
stares at the shadow
Klezmer

Gerd Borner

out of the blue
the echo of a sigh

Gerd Borner

Evening light -
in the small sea
my second face

Gerd Borner

Sunday breakfast
the whisper of the house
in silence

Brigitte ten Brink

first frost
the circus clears
the dreams

Simone K Busch

all that happened
before forgetting
starry night

Simone K Busch

intoxicating
the rhetoric
of the rain

Frank Dietrich

the blue of the sky
where my son drowned
a wavelength

Frank Dietrich

Homeless
die Vergangenheit
in a box

Hildegard Dohrendorf

A sunflower
midst
the plane debris

Regina F. Fischer

First snow.
Cat tracks on the path
to the moon.

Volker Friebel

bell ringing
over the snow - our sledge
takes off.

Volker Friebel

unemployed…
in my house
a tiger

Heike Gericke

Blue light
Throw paving stones
Shadow

Hans-Jürgen Goehrung

Screeching steel strand -
the delicate wallflower
defies loneliness.

Claus Hansson

silent post
what do the old people know
of love

Gabriele Hartman

waiting …
the first flakes
I give names

Gabriele Hartman

fun run
In the fast lane
"Old Spice"

Martina Heinish

the jewelry box
from the nursing home ...
flawless chestnuts

Martina Heinish

Sea lights
a star falls
from the Milky Way

Margareta Hihn

the hydrangea,
she still quotes
rilke in the garden

Norbert Kraas

winter landscape
a night train outlined
their shapes

Gerard Krebs

Summer euphoria
Swallows scratch lines
in the sky tent

Gerard Krebs

Shard Moon -
there was just a dream

Eva Limbach

Harvest Moon -
I look at the lines
in my face

Eva Limbach

leaning against the lighthouse -
search the border
between sky and sea

Eva Limbach

riparian zone
the depth between reflections
Of the sky

Ramona Left

hard chained
on the bike stand
the rollator

Birgit Lockheimer

End of season -
Walk between the poplars
two lounge chairs

Claudia Melchior

the old watchdog
the soft rattling
of his dreams

Eleanor Nickolay

the crunch
of our steps
well to the last course

Eleanor Nickolay

Bedridden -
to the beat of the wind
the dance of the trees

Eleanor Nickolay

the walking shoes
thrown old to waste
return at night

Theo Schmich

Niederschlag
under the lids
the unsaid

Angelica Seithe

summer twilight
ashes in the oven
old fire

Angelica Seithe

stubble
Wind turns
your last letter

Helga Stania

rainbow
the girl's eyes
hanging on the smartphone

Helga Stania

peace group
fight with megaphone
against the empty space

Elisabeth Weber Strobel

hand-knotted
how many children's dreams
are kicked….

Elisabeth Weber Strobel

evening sky
she hesitates her usual
Removing makeup

Klaus-Dieter Wirth

the call of the jay
in the funnel of the mushroom hat
a rest of rain

Klaus-Dieter Wirth

alone in the cloister
free einen moment
to be extraterrestrial

Peter Wissmann

family celebration
rain drips from the party tent
in old wounds

Peter Wissmann

station hotel
the pulsation of the city
seeps into sleep

Peter Wissmann

with red wine
they fall out of the frame
the pictures
first the camaraderie
then the shrapnel

Ralf Broker