A total of 224 haiku by 79 authors and 44 tanka by 26 authors were submitted for this selection. The deadline for entries was January 15, 2018. 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.
Only previously unpublished texts can be submitted (also applies to publications in blogs, forums, social media and workshops etc.). No simultaneous submissions please!

Please preferably enter the haiku / tanka yourself in the online form on the DHG website:
deutschehaikugesellschaft.de/haiku-und-tanka-die-wahl/
Otherwise by email to: auswahlen@deutschehaikugesellschaft.de

The next submission deadline for the Haiku / Tanka selection is April 15, 2018.

Each participant can submit up to five texts - three of which are haiku. With the submission, the author gives his consent for a possible publication in the DHG Agenda 2019 as well as on http: /www.zugetextet.com/

Haiku selection from HTA

The jury consisted of Birgit Heid, Walter Mathois and Sonja Raab. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.
All selected texts - 36 haiku - are published in alphabetical order of the author's names. Up to max. added two haiku per author.
"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 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.

Eleanor Nickolay

A haiku that particularly appeals to me

book exchange
I discover
you new

Christa Beau

Anyone who thinks that book exchange has become something rare these days is wrong. Book cells are currently springing up like mushrooms. Former telephone booths are being converted in many places. The idea of ​​book exchange is deeply economical. Throwing away a book after reading it is out of the question for book lovers. Books are a valuable asset. So you pass it on to someone who hasn't read it yet.
After the weekly shopping in the city, I regularly check the book booth to see what's new. There is just everything to discover from the New York illustrated book to Nietzsche's poems. And sometimes you can find in the books the idiosyncrasies of a reader who has read the book before you. Markings on the side, whole insights that were written into it, bookmarks, pressed petals or handkerchiefs.
Now, however, the last line in this haiku says that I rediscover "YOU"! So the book tells me something about you. Something I didn't know before. Something new.
I literally discover a new side of you. It surprises me. I would not have rated you that way. Maybe I am impressed. Because the material is not easy and I would not have believed you at all. Or vice versa, it surprises me because I would not have believed that you would read such snitch novels.
Tell me what you're reading and I'll tell you who you are. Or what you want to be. Because it is far from certain whether you can understand and implement what you have read. Some libraries just keep appearances.

Selected and commented by Sonja Raab

snow clouds
the hermit deepened
his silence

Gabriele Hartman

This haiku spontaneously sparked great enthusiasm in me. Without being able to imagine exactly what a deepening of the silence could mean, I felt it. In combination with the hermit, a picture of the deliberate, complete retreat was created.
I introduce myself to the hermits in the Hermitage, a small forest monastery on the Kolmerberg, near the village of Dörrenbach, among a handful of brothers as he is just leaving the crooked dining room with old furniture to take the outside stairs down to the chapel to get to where he wanted to delve into his meditation.
Perhaps in the early morning the hermit had caught his thoughts picking up speed again and branching out, so that silence would become increasingly difficult. A word would soon come to his lips if he didn't keep his thoughts in check. And the thoughts were the source of the words and thus of the strife.
On the way to the chapel, he saw the pale gray snow clouds annoyed. "In snow you get wet and cold feet right away! For all the beauty, but what good is it if you keep freezing? Besides, I can't take the brightness anymore! “, He thought.
He unlocked the chapel door, knelt on the bench, his breath in front of his face became calmer, his thoughts slowed and slowly but slowly returned to his center, a dark, warm room.

Selected and commented by Birgit Heid

veiled moon
tell the story
two worlds

Gabriele Hartman

What for some readers of this haiku might be a little cocky and at the same time meaningless because it is not very specific, namely the idea of ​​"two worlds", I immediately liked. Also because the "story" is kept in the singular and therefore represents a common story of two worlds.
You can personally think about what could be meant by two worlds. In any case, because of the concept of “worlds”, they are areas or events that are far apart or very different. They could be regions of the world that are to be viewed as opposed to each other culturally or in terms of their living conditions, or they could be long periods of time apart. Likewise, a tragic family story would come into question, which one tells his grandchildren and from which one knows both the perpetrator and the victim side.
Be that as it may, through the singularity of the “story” the narrator knows about the commonality of the so far apart levels. He or she can use it to offer plausible explanations for many of the world's riddles. By being a story, motives for behavior or wrongdoing can be linked here and there, today and then, by this or that person.
Then there is the “veiled moon”. For me, the moon has almost a god-like universal existence. It stands above all worlds in the world, in the past and now, it stands for change and continuity, it shows different sides, the hidden zones of which also belong to it, and it is the symbol of femininity.
Now he is "veiled". That tells me that the story at stake is either best concealed (for example, a tragic family story), that an association with Muslim-based veils may be about a woman's fate, or that the story here is about is somewhat obscure due to the lack of proof and remains dependent on assumptions or logical conclusions. Not easy for the storyteller, here he or she relies on his or her ability to reason.
But where does my enthusiasm come from? I am currently writing a story that took place in the Neolithic period, shortly before the line band ceramists were replaced by the people of Michelsberg culture. I encounter the present and the past when I visit that place to be described, and the intensive preoccupation with the subject leads to the recognition of many a common ground to the present.

Selected and commented by Birgit Heid

first frost
my grandson sets the chimney
to the gingerbread house

Ruth Caroline Mieger

A memory of the youth. And the cold spells of the last century. In this century we only know the severe frost from the fairy tale book, from a haiku or from early stories.
I feel the freezing cold in this haiku. Outside, the wind plays with the window panes, makes them clink and whistles through the cracks in the windows. Uneasiness lives in the garden, the trees creak and the grasses of last summer bend.
We got a gingerbread kit. This afternoon, on this first Sunday in Advent, I want to assemble the gingerbread house. Not because I like sticky fingers, but out of curiosity ... and ... because I want to lure my grandchild away from his smartphone. I glue and glue (I can sweeten any coffee with my fingers). "Almost finished!"
"Grandpa, something is still missing!" With his small, busy fingers, he places the chimney on the cake stand. "Now I've built the house with you", with childlike satisfaction he snaps his smartphone and leaves me alone with the calorie bomb.
The opposites (a = "first frost") to (bc = my grandson puts the chimney / on the gingerbread house), as well as the opposites (b = grandson <–> to me as an unnamed grandfather or unnamed grandmother) and have the common in the family touched me very much and let this haiku choose as my number one.

Selected and commented by Walter Mathois

The selection

Second bloom -
the roses on the dress
smell like back then

Ellen Althaus-Rojas

storm warning
the express train
the wild ducks

Sylvia Bacher

book exchange
I discover
you new

Christa Beau

Nursing home visit
in the aquarium
most contacts

Martin Berner

scarred heart
our names
in the bark of the elm

Stefanie Bucifal

the homeless
changes the sleeping place
Plum blossom fragrance

Simone K Busch

Drought ...
the silent screams
the gargoyle

Frank Dietrich

hunger moon
somewhere has been crying for days
a dog

Frank Dietrich

ointment
your whispered
words

Hans Jürgen Goehrung

Sunbeams
on your grave
the shadows wither

Erika Hanning

the cat is dreaming
in the light
dances the moth

Claus Hansson

geometry
a silver ray grazes
the moon

Claus Hansson

veiled moon
tell the story
two worlds

Gabriele Hartman

snow clouds
the hermit deepened
his silence

Gabriele Hartman

fog sheets
between the facades
shadow

Kerstin Hirsch

New Year's bells
in everything else
the sound of emptiness

Anne Holtz

Whispering night moon
give him
my darkest smile

Anne Holtz

contrails
a cloud
grow wings

Angelica Holweger

April sun -
a farmer plows light
in the field

Gerard Krebs

Happy New Year!
Day after tomorrow
the doctor's appointment

Renate Kueppers

Father returns home
and again no meat
in the soup

Matteo dear

first spring day -
i feed the dog
of a stranger

Eva Limbach

Coastal fog -
somewhere a father is calling
after his son

Eva Limbach

first frost
my grandson sets the chimney
to the gingerbread house

Ruth Caroline Mieger

Advent Calendar
the closed doors
to childhood

Eleanor Nickolay

End of vacation
deep in the schoolbag
a shell

Christiane Ranieri

New Year's Day
on the old guitar
the string replaced

Evelyn Schmidt

Brush broom -
she pulls a short hair
from her chin

Angelica Seithe

the balance
the storks on their nest -
old relationship

Angelica Seithe

new moon
smile in her
snow is falling

Helga Stania

old hands
slowly rises spring
in the walnut tree

Helga Stania

Meis swarm
the uncracked nuts
crisis conference

Henrietta Tomasi

January night
the mosquito in the firewood
hums a lullaby

Angela Hilde Timm

Stille Nacht
a soldier on guard
humming

Udo Wenzel

continuous rain
the still pond
the collar bursts

Friedrich winemaker

dusk
a snow groomer pushes
the day into the night

Friedrich winemaker

HTA tanka selection

The texts selected by Tony Böhle and Silvia Kempen - five tanka - are published in alphabetical order of the author's names.

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

A tanka that particularly appeals to me

the parchment
in father's face
the pale lips
I study and don't study
to die

Gabriele Hartman

I remember a story I read some time ago: An old monk told how death once frightened him in his youth. One day, astonished, he met an old man who was looking forward to his approaching end with great serenity. He grabbed him angrily and asked: "Aren't you afraid to die?" But the old man only replied: "I sent my hair, nails and eyesight many years ago, what does it matter if the rest will soon follow ? "

I think this story illustrates quite well what the tanka selected above has in store for us. Many have already had the experience of accompanying a family member as they die, and are therefore familiar with the sight of a dying person as described here.

The skin, thin like "parchment", which lets all veins shine through, "pale lips", through which no more blood seems to flow. Perhaps memories of past times are also mixed in when this face was still shining and the beloved father, who is now just a shadow of himself, exuded the aura of a protector. It may be sad and depressing to see something like this, even knowing that one day you will share the same fate. What is also surprising is the calmness and calm with which many dying people accept their fate.

That is why the lyrical ego attentively explores that face: the skin, the lips, every nook and cranny, in order to get to the bottom of the secret of dying. But this "study" remains doomed, how could it be otherwise. An attempt to find out with the mind what is closed to him alone. Even if you read all the books in the world about salt, miss it and explore it, think about it, twist and turn it, you will only fully understand it when you taste it.

In the end it is the same with death, which only reveals its secret, its nature, to the dying person. Even the lyrical self cannot escape this knowledge, as the last two lines of the Tanka show: "I study and do not learn / to die". The interplay between content and external design is very well implemented. The fourth line has a little surprise with a total of eight syllables. This technique of surplus mores or syllables is used specifically in Tanka, Japan, to emphasize the statements of the relevant lines. And where would this be more appropriate than in the context of "I'm studying and not learning"? So the last line “to die” with its only three syllables is in no way inferior to the previous line. The end of the tanka, which the reader initially felt was too short and abrupt, aptly reflects the feeling of the lyrical ego when thinking of the father's death.

Selected and commented by Tony Böhle

The selection

the parchment
in father's face
the pale lips
I study and don't study
to die

Gabriele Hartman

der Teppich
in the good room
handwoven
from gray threads
my childhood

Gabriele Hartman

the old staircase
storm-tested
whispers
in dialect
the ancestor

Use Jacobson

yesterday's battles
today's battles
in the sigh of the wind
we can already guess
tomorrow's tears

Eleanor Nickolay

The first frost is coming
the branches become lighter,
colored carpet
spread out under the tree,
he will fly with the wind.

Hildegard Sell