A total of 226 haiku by 80 authors and 68 tanka by 29 authors were submitted for this selection. The deadline for submissions was October 15, 2021. I anonymized these texts before the selection began.

Each member of the DHG has the option of naming a submission that should be published on the member's own page if the jury disregards it.

Can be submitted only previously unpublished texts (also applies to publications on blogs, forums, including the forums on HI HAIKU, social media and workshops etc.).

No simultaneous submissions please!

Please Haiku / Tanka collected in one operation Enter yourself in the online form on the DHG website HI HAIKU:

June selection: Entry deadline April 15, 2022

Otherwise by email with a keyword Haiku / Tanka selection January 15, 01 in the subject please to:

Wahlen@deutschehaikugesellschaft.de

The next deadline for the Haiku / Tanka selection is the January 15, 2022.

Each participant can take up to six Texts - three Haiku and three Tanka - submit.

With the submission, the author gives the consent for a possible publication in the agenda of the DHG and on http://www.zugetextet.com/ as well as for a possible presentation on the website of the Haiku International Association.

Haiku selection from HTA

The jury consisted of Frank Dietrich, Sylvia Hartmann and Ramona Linke. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.

All selected texts - 30 haiku by 23 authors - are published in alphabetical order of the author's name. A maximum of two haiku per author will be recorded.

"A haiku that particularly appeals to me" - this is the motto for each jury member to select up to three texts (still anonymized), to present and comment on them here.

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.

Peter Rudolf

A haiku that particularly appeals to me

from the neighboring garden
today a friendly nod
sunflower

Elisabeth Weber Strobel

Although I know that a relationship with nature is important for a haiku, I like haiku that include our human environment, perhaps because I've lived in the city my whole life and nature is sometimes quite a long way away. This haiku brings both subject areas together in a successful way.

Many city dwellers, when they don't have a garden at home, buy an allotment garden out of longing for nature. During the time of the corona pandemic, the demand for it increased again significantly. Some not only enjoy the contact with nature, but also the human contact in such an allotment garden. But there are also bitter disputes between garden neighbors, over branches that grow over the fence, noise pollution and different ideas of order. They can go so far that one no longer speaks to one another and no longer even greets one another.

Perhaps the haiku speaks out of such an experience. The sunflower, for me a flower with a positive charisma anyway, doesn't care about human sympathies or antipathies. Your nod applies to both, whoever planted it, as well as to his neighbor. Their friendly charisma across the fence gives hope that, thanks to the shared joy of nature, conversations between neighbors that have fallen silent here and there will come back to life.

Selected and commented by Sylvia Hartmann

The selection

first kiss
just the moonlight
between us

Mona Bedi

Listen to the wind:
the melody of the sea
in pine tops.

Thomas Berger

Grave visit ...
her gaze leans
to me

Claudia Brefeld

rain-soaked window
my face is staring
through me

Claudia Brefeld

icicle
getting thinner and thinner
our friendships

Maya Daneva

Church door closes ...
the light of the candle
straighten up again

Maya Daneva

Nightly power failure -
anew
marvel at the stars.

Reinhard Dellbrugge

Desk in the monastery.
Humming in front of a white wall
the silence.

Volker Friebel

Fire in the fireplace
behind the curtain the world
vergessen

Wolfgang founder

we need to talk
I close the window
it gets quiet

Wolfgang founder

autumn night -
the rustling
the Stars …

Ruth Guggenmos-Walter

early autumn
the blackbird modulates
our keynote

Matthew Gysel

Snowstorm -
the sluggish pulse
of the perpendicular

Klaus Kornexl

Barrens -
your thistles
my poppies

Udo Mansfield

Museum visit
live for a while
Klee's villa R.

Ruth Caroline Mieger

Postseason
people on the beach
greet each other again

Eleanor Nickolay

an old cell phone
Contacts,
that are just names

Kamil Plich

Pounding rain
a single blackbird
does not care.

Maximilian Pohl

The eternal ice
the alpine glacier -
fallen into time

Sabina Ptascheck

Men's outfitter -
in the vestibule
an empty sleeping bag

Sabina Ptascheck

Beginning of winter
Your last words
still glowing

Renate Maria Riehemann

autumn Blues
a woodpecker knocks
the beat

Evelyn Schmidt

disappear in the forest
under the weight of the snow
the blackberry tendrils

Marie Luise Schulze Frenking

the little flower
at the foot of the keep
how it shines

Angelica Seithe

Rainy day -
in passing
your smile

Angelica Seithe

hoarfrost
von den linden comes off
the light

Helga Stania

from the neighboring garden
today a friendly nod
sunflower

Elisabeth Weber Strobel

missing for three days
she struts past me
the old queen

Elisabeth Weber Strobel

a fish
brings the moon
wavering

Friedrich winemaker

Sunday
also the fog
remains lying

Friedrich winemaker

HTA tanka selection

Silvia Kempen and Martin Thomas selected 8 Tanka from 7 authors. A maximum of two tanka per author will be accepted.

"A tanka that appeals to me particularly" - texts are presented and commented on under this motto.

A tanka that particularly appeals to me

du fragst mich
according to the meaning of life
but look
on the banks of the stream
Marsh marigolds

Christopher Blumentrath

What is the meaning of life? Countless people have asked themselves this question for centuries. There is a ton of literature on the subject with many different answers or "no answers". Often very complicated, but sometimes also very simple.

I would like to quote Peter Ustinov on this:

“The meaning of life: something that nobody really knows. In any case, there is little point in being the richest man in the cemetery. "

It seems to be easier to answer, which makes no sense. And yet this answer is very simple for some people, as can be seen in the last two lines of the tanka: "on the bank of the stream / marsh marigolds". For me these lines express: To be able to enjoy the little things, to experience a feeling of happiness when they look at them. But it is not so easy for everyone, some find it difficult, question everything, including or especially the simple answers.

At the same time, through the last two lines, the reader learns the place where the two who are apparently going for a walk are. That there are two people, one questioner and one answerer, can already be seen at the beginning of the tanka.

It is clear to me that the marsh marigolds are in bloom. They are so much more noticeable with their bright yellow color. Marsh marigolds are early bloomers, so they bloom in spring, a time of new growth and new beginnings, the part of the year when everything seems to awaken to new life. Perhaps also a time in which one asks about the meaning of life in order to shape it anew, to make a new beginning.

Selected and commented by Silvia Kempen

Your view of the sea
as if the top of the mast was diving somewhere
of a text on -
but keep silent about the shallows
her blue dreams

Angelica Seithe

Sometimes one is magically drawn to a poem without knowing exactly why. That's what happened to me with this tanka, which fascinated me in equal measure as it left me perplexed. Little by little, I transformed myself into a seeing subject who sinks completely into contemplation. In my case, however, it was not the sea that spread out in front of me, but a mystical web of words that seemed just as large and intangible.

The starting point of this five-liner is a “view of the sea”. However, this look, which is observed by the statement subject in the other person, is neither banal nor fleeting. On the contrary, the other person seems to be looking for something, so intensely does it direct its eyes to the blue expanse in front of it. Here the poem surprises for the first time, since the "mast tip" used for the comparison is not that of an ordinary boat or ship, but that of "a text".

In the second half of the poem, the confusion created is further stirred up. In this way, the sea not only becomes the agent of the plot, but also denies the seeker from the first half of the text any answers to the potentially existing questions by hiding his "blue dreams" deep below the surface. I have seldom found such an abstract language in a modern German tanka, and seldom have I had so many question marks over my head at the end of a poem as in this case.

One or the other reader may therefore certainly wonder whether it is a tanka at all. Personally, I don't see a problem in this genre allocation. Because of the given form, the poem inevitably wants to be understood as such. Linguistically, through the inclusion of certain semantically linked association words (engo 縁 語) such as “sea”, “blue” and “shoals”, which are distributed over different lines, and even an element from traditional Waka poetry. And on a thematic level - it's basically about a person's search for support and orientation - the poem is exactly where it should be.

Every reader has to decide for himself whether the degree of abstractness and openness that is deliberately provoked is still acceptable in the end. In any case, I myself had great pleasure reading and inevitably had to think of Schiller's remarks on the sublime, in which he describes the sight of the ocean as a trigger to tear the human mind "from the narrow sphere of reality and the oppressive imprisonment of physical life". The poem at hand had exactly the same transcendent effect on me, which is why it particularly appealed to me.

Selected and commented by Martin Thomas

 The selection

you and me
and the sound of slow
falling snow
the silence between us
speaks volumes

Mona Bedi

du fragst mich
according to the meaning of life
but look
on the banks of the stream
Marsh marigolds

Christopher Blumentrath

Ninetieth -
she plays her last card
again without Mau-Mau

the leaves of the poinsettia
tremble in the heating air

Taiki Haijin

Autumn morning -
after saying goodbye
alone again
he strokes her withered
nightgown become

Udo Mansfield

before the funeral
pause again
in front of the parents' house
behind the facade
the good old times

Wolfgang Roedig

Your view of the sea
as if the top of the mast was diving somewhere
of a text on -
but keep silent about the shallows
her blue dreams

Angelica Seithe

year for year
maintained the garden
and now in old age
he becomes week after week
more independent

Friedrich winemaker

as fast as an arrow
with the best posture grade
immersed
in the glittering sun
the kingfisher

Friedrich winemaker

Special contribution by René Possél

René Possél chose a haiku from all anonymized submissions that particularly appeals to him.

hoarfrost
von den linden comes off
the light

Helga Stania

In the haiku, I loved the melody and style of speech. Two alliterations determine the sound: the "raureif "in the first line and the identical words in the second and third lines:"lin the - least - licht ".

The haiku not only indulges in the acoustic, but also in the visual. The image of trees covered with hoar frost = linden trees is conjured up. Dynamism and tension are created in the second line: What is breaking away from the ice-covered linden trees? The winter season is also indirectly made clear here.

The surprising “dissolution” of the tension reads: It is “the light” that falls from the linden trees as the hoarfrost thaws.

If you like, you can also see something deeper, dialectical, even “time” in this picture: coldness and ice that hold the light in the frozen water droplets; Warmth of the sun and the day, which slowly melts the hoarfrost, but at the same time allows the light to "drip" ... A haiku of cold beauty that needs to be spoken aloud and looked at carefully.