2025 Japan Fair Haiku Contest

First Place

apple blossoms

your silence

when I need you

Boryana Boteva

Sofia, Bulgaria

Our world is brimming with beauty, as suggested here by apple blossoms. But we also face challenges and tensions in life—times when we need help and support. This bittersweet poem captures a moment of appreciation or awareness tinged with loneliness and perhaps alienation. We don’t know why the poet needs help or support from someone else, but we can easily imagine possibilities. The beautiful blossoms may provide some consolation, but still that need persists, and isn’t that how all of life often is? Perhaps by always remembering the blossoms in our lives we can more easily face life’s challenges.

Second Place

summer solstice

the busker plays

a tune from home

Neena Singh

Chandigarh, India

The height of summer is when many people travel or enjoy vacations. On this special summer day with the longest daylight hours of the year, the poet hears a street busker play a song. It’s not any song, but a song from home. Is it from the busker’s home or the listener’s home? Is “home” a foreign country that might be shared by the musician and the listener? Whatever the case, a touch of nostalgia warms us. Whenever we travel, we too might be able to find connection in a song from home.

Third Place

melting frost

a letter crumpled up

and flattened again

Christine L. Villa

California, United States

Something about that letter prompted the action of crumpling it up. And yet the person in the poem wants to revisit the letter’s words, perhaps to get past disbelief as a way of accepting thoughts that might not have been desired. The frost is melting outside, but perhaps an internal frost is also melting in a moment of complex emotion.

Adult Honorable Mentions (in order)

war zone . . .

the continued shelling

of green peas

Ed Bremson

North Carolina, United States

In today’s troubling times, no matter where we live, what can we do but try to continue living as normally as possible? The deft double meaning of “shelling” creates a twist in this poem, the revelation of doing our best with normalcy despite abnormal and perhaps life-threatening tensions.

golden hour

the outline of a fish

in a pelican’s pouch

Ravi Kiran

Hyderabad, India

The golden hour is that time of day shortly after sunrise or before sunset when sunlight warms with a golden glow—a great time for photography. In this poem it’s easy to imagine low sunset light brightening a pelican’s translucent pouch from behind. It’s a beautiful image with touches of sympathy we might have for the poor fish or recognition that the pelican isn’t going hungry.

winter night

the rustle of loose papers

down the alley

Olivier Schopfer

Geneva, Switzerland

What are those loose papers? Perhaps just remnants of neglected garbage, but maybe papers that have been deliberately tossed to the wind. That mystery seems to be deepened by the winter night, a feeling of coldness coming to those papers, not just physically but emotionally too.

Youth Honorable Mentions (in order)

summer’s end

the faded squares

of hopscotch

Antonia Chersan (14)

Botosani, Romania

This wistful poem is about more than just the end of summer—maybe also the end of childhood. Children (perhaps including the author of this poem) have enjoyed hopscotch and outdoor play during the summer, but now summer has ended, so it’s time to return to school, even though those hopscotch squares remain. And all too soon these children will finish school, and their childhood will fade just as surely as those hopscotch squares. This vivid seasonal image enables readers to feel and experience what the poet felt.

last bell

a butterfly clings

to the school gate

Danish Yumnam (13)

Ajman, United Arab Emirates

Is this the last bell of the day or perhaps the last bell of the school year? Either way, the image of the butterfly suggests a mixture of freedom and longing, together with a hope for the future—even while it still clings to what may be fond memories of school. This is a poem about growing up.

summer music

the wind blowing through

the empty shells

Maria Negrut (15)

Botosani, Romania

Is the wind blowing through these empty shells the source of the “music”? If not, then we can imagine all sorts of alternatives, such as a guitarist or a small band playing at an outdoor restaurant, perhaps heard from a distance while we walk along the beach.

About the Judge

Michael Dylan Welch is the founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) and cofounder of the Seabeck Haiku Getaway, the Haiku North America conference, and the American Haiku Archives, webmaster for Haiku Northwest (www.haikunorthwest.org), and president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword. He was keynote speaker for the 2013 Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo and has been teaching haiku for thirty years. His haiku have won numerous prizes and have been translated into at least twenty languages, and he has published 75 books. Michael’s website, devoted mostly to haiku, is www.graceguts.com.