Between May and July 2011, a total of 251 haiku and 22 tanka were submitted by 68 authors for this selection. The deadline for entries was July 15, 2011. Each participant could submit 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 Roswitha Erler, Helmut Hannig and Elisabeth Kleineheismann. The members of the selection group did not submit their own texts.
All selected works (50 haiku and 4 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 Roswitha Erler:
Tango
for three minutes
unfaithful
The haiku impresses with its brevity and the associations it evokes. Dance muffins may not say anything. But anyone who loves tango and dances themselves will open up the dimensions that these few words reveal. Because tango is a dance full of sensuality.
It originated in Argentina from a kind of folk dance, lives on as such, is constantly changing and thus remains alive. The rhythm is a slow 2/4 or 4/4 time. The partners' music and sense of movement determine step sequences and figures.
I still hear my dance teacher with her command "Wie-ge-step" and how we then hugged each other, 15 or 16 years old, very carefully. It could never be a tango, just a wooden sequence of steps and twists.
In the Tango, the movements of the partner should be more guessed at, felt. This can only be achieved if the two of them fully engage with each other, so to speak indulge.
Today I read something about tango receptors (in the foreign dictionary) for the first time. These are touch-sensitive sensory organs that react to mechanical stimuli. Aha!! Even named after the tango!
The question remains: where does infidelity begin? So with the Tango !? Probably you can't get past it - for three minutes.
By the way, G. Bernhard Shaw put it this way: the tango is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
The above haiku says it shorter and most importantly - more discreetly.
Selected and commented by Helmut Hannig:
Morning chill -
the archer cocks
the silence
The situation described here is absolutely breathtaking.
The morning coolness surrounds nature, outlines in it grow shadowily out of the fog, dew pearls tremble on the tops and edges of grasses, everything is penetrated by silence.
You don't dare to breathe, your own thoughts can even be disturbing. The only movement you perceive is breathing, maybe a bird scurries through this picture. That morning coolness, combined with the rising fullness of light creates a tension arc in the coming day.
It is the expectation - a minimal moment for what is to come. The archer
-anonymos, the silence stretches across his tendon to allow it to freeze, so to speak. May it never pass, may it last.
It is precisely this archer who puts his light arrow on the tendon in a restrained adagio, at that moment touches the curve of the horizon to become day. Suddenly she herself comes to an end out of the silence, it is moments of being fulfilled, like stepping out of an imaginary river to go towards the day. And every morning there is the tension for new things to be discovered.
Selected and commented by Elisabeth Kleineheismann:
Raindrops ...
plunge into one
Mandala
I find this haiku very closely observed.
I have been painting mandalas for some time now, mostly on weekends when I have time.
Mandala comes from Sanskrit and means "circle".
On the last Sunday I sit in my studio in rainy weather and I am immersed in my painting, immersed in my mandala.
Haiku comes to mind and everything is different.
I read and see a calm lake, or a puddle. The first raindrop falls ... This is the moment when a mandala is created.
It continues, drop by drop falls, a second, a third mandala is created, the water surface fills, it circles.
Moving.
The selection
His garden hat ...
the trouble of many years
in the scent of straw
Evening shade -
only with the trees
can i cry
Tango
for three minutes
unfaithful
house demolition
the walls rumble
Contradictions
Family breakfast
and the spider at the window
keep spinning her web
to the home country …
tumbles over the train track
a butterfly
April.
Nature changes that
Dress code.
der Wind
writes hissing verses
to the sea
how easy
to carry them across the threshold
in a dream
Flower cascades -
in the wind
a new sound
Shimmering silk
slides from her shoulders
die Nacht
Clouds
plunged into the blue
the song of the lark
Summer rain.
Between drops of tumble
a bee.
Nobel district.
The underground car park opens
for a bike.
Sky and sea
doesn't want to end
the kiss
the old linden tree
the whispering in the branches
at the first kiss
from the breast
the gypsum phrodite
a butterfly dissolves
Royal wedding
rattle in the women's salon
Scissors and mouth
Solstice -
he carries the furniture
to the neighboring house
On the quay wall
blue-eyed men
spin sailor yarn
Sunday
the bells are ringing
the we one
Storm is coming
two rose petals fall
in Buddha's lap
Signpost
on a felled tree
Naturefriends house
A demanding beep
under the canopy
the mortuary
Waiting room -
leaning against artificial roses
two crutches
Wait away
a piece of heaven on earth
finding
Storm
in the red of the alpine roses
hailstones
Duck flapping
in my jacket pocket
the dachshund
pain of parting
the cry of a seagull
penetrates through the night
Sheep cold ...
a sheared poodle
trembles.
Morning cool ...
The archer cocks
the silence
The blackbird sings
above the roofs of the city
evening prayer
dusk
the day hesitates for a long time
to become night
sandy beach
so many hour glasses
time
the sommerreg
the picture in the pond
shatters
dancing dust
in the closet mother's bridal shoes
and their braids
back home
the long shoots
of onions
I also tweet
daily - with the blackbird
in front of my balcony
afternoon heat
in the treetops
thunderclouds
Tied to the bed
Through the hose in my arm
Time drips and drips
Barefoot through the stream
Marvel at fish
the tattoo on my foot
Raindrops ...
plunge into one
Mandala
Footsteps quietly in the gravel ...
I wipe pollen
from her name
In the railway tunnel
the smiling reflection
the neighbour
In the wobble of stars
on the elderflower
the bumblebee is now swaying
My window darkens
What can the cricket know?
I listen again
The seagull's cry
ebbs away in the noise of the surf -
a couple stands silently.
deafening
the amazement
of the clown
Calm in the park -
a blind man reads
Voices in Braille
Between the rubble
a child holds his doll.
It survived.
In the subway
enter silently
look down
a homeless man
talks to himself
Childrens Furniture
since marriage and moving out
nothing changed
the doll in her wedding dress
facing the wall
Blue hydrangea
interwoven with gilb like
porous paper -
on fading flowers
the day writes initials
Too small to bathe
seems the crow
the bird bath
But struggles in distress
the beetle for his life