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In November of 2025 I judged the haiku category for the 2025 Seven Hills / Penumbra Haiku Contest sponsored by the Tallahassee Writers Association. Although the contest received only 21 entries, I was pleased to select the three winners shown here. My selections, but not the following commentaries, will appear in Seven Hills Review, Volume 31, published by the Tallahassee Writers Association in the summer of 2026, and winners’ names and results appeared online when results were announced 11 December 2025 on Zoom. I wrote my commentary in November 2025. Although the 2025 contest did not require submissions to follow a 5-7-5 syllable-count, two of the three top winners still followed this pattern, but did not feel forced or unnatural. See also the 2024 winners.
Michael Dylan Welch, judge
First Place
First Place
open chrysalis
a butterfly emerging
into present tense
Edward Cody Huddleston
Baxley, Georgia
Many haiku work best in a primarily objective mode that focuses on presenting a pair of carefully juxtaposed images. This poem expands that tradition by ending with an abstraction, and thus a touch of subjectivity. Yet still that touch is grounded in an experiential here-and-now moment of appreciation and wonder. How more present could anything be but a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis?
Second Place
Second Place
night swim—
gliding gently through
the Milky Way
Cristian Matei
Bucharest, Romania
The Milky Way and all its stars are reflected in a quiet pool. I picture this to be somewhere out in nature rather than a backyard swimming pool. Not a ripple disturbs those reflections until the poet slips into the water. The poet is not disrupting the reflection but joining it, generating a transcendent moment that combines closeness with vastness.
Third Place
Third Place
colorful balloons—
the little girl snatches up
her magician’s wand
Cristian Matei
Bucharest, Romania
Is this a birthday party? This is surely a young child who believes in the magic of that wand, snatching it up amid the day’s festive balloons as if to conjure up even more magic for her special day.
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