Touchstone Award '23 Nominations

It is without doubt one of the highlights of my year: to sit down with all four editions of the Wales Haiku Journal, and take time to choose ten powerful, poignant poems from each season to submit to the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards.

This year I'd like to share these with you, with the aim of giving such evocative pieces another opportunity to be read, to be thought about, to be delighted in.

Here are the haiku chosen...

Winter 

first light

the kangaroo’s yawn

holds the sun

Marilyn Humbert 

meadow wind—

this urge of becoming

a butterfly

Hifsa Ashraf

snow on the rice paddy

the crow has gained

the world

Patrick Sweeney

meditation deepening into a hoopoe's song

Srini

the last hundred butterflies white lie

Aidan Castle

3D printing sunlight in the forest

Tony Williams

Teenage laughter   cornstalks swaying behind the barn

Danny Daw

after all the leaves have fallen pregnant earth

Marilyn Fleming

following the footsteps

of a polar bear

winter dream

John Han

a late bloom

on the briar rose

full moon

Bri Bruce

Spring

snow melt

I enter a year

of seconds

Bisshie

morning mist

the softness of

pussy willow

Farah Ali

spring lake

a beaver's tail

strikes the sun

Marilyn Ashbaugh

zazen...

a lotus rises

above the mud

Neena Singh

rain-washed air

the empty clothesline

dripping clouds

Lesley Anne Swanson

Spring blizzard

father retells

my birth story

Jenn Ryan-Jauregui

in the eyes

of the strung-up fish

island sunrise

Bryan Rickert

coastal walk

the tumult of the sea

in my son’s eyes

Adele Evershed

gleaning

the stubble field

evening light

Helen Ogden

in praise

of darkness –

fireflies

Alvin Cruz

SUMMER 

morning dream ----

the mountain

kissing the moon

Manoj Sharma

forest walk

the phoenix stirring

within me

Antoinette Cheung

clear sky

the way you hold

my hand

Adrian Bouter

sunshine

on the nape of my neck

my father’s hand

Tate Lewis-Carroll

deep down in the center

of a thistle bud—

summer

Laurie Morrissey

Summer woods

I gain admission

as a child

Millicent Bee

pocked red dust in the sockets of the sheep’s skull the rain

Mark Miller

their campfire’s smoke

blends with ours...

canopy of stars

Lee Hudspeth

wolfpack—

a freight train surges

into the night

Aiden Castle

a dove disappears

in the heat shimmer

summer breakup

David Watts

AUTUMN

summer stillness

a fisherman taps his cane

across the creek

Glenn Coats

September rain...

by the hedge the soft patter

of sheep

Dorothy Burrows

fresh drilled earth...

more fine lines waiting

to be written

Dorothy Burrows

just words...

slipping peaches

from their skins

Tony Williams

where you try

to ease my mind

wild mussels

Adrian Bouter

distant lightning—

the heron

switches legs

Aiden Castle

rain glistening

on the curl of an oak leaf

my son drives off

Thomas Festa

the fwop

of a pulled cork

hay bale

Bill Cooper

dry desert waterfall

my thoughts

exactly

Lee Hudspeth

holding

the sunset still

his last poem

John Pappas