2008 Haiku Invitational

The following are top results and commentary from the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s 2008 Haiku Invitational contest, judged by Carole MacRury, Michael Dylan Welch, and Edward Zuk. For 2008 we added the new category of best British Columbia poem, and provided comments on each individual winner. We completed our judging in January of 2008. The following comments originally appeared on the Haiku Invitational page on the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival website. The image shows a bus placard, with 2008 winners, used to promote the festival throughout greater Vancouver on city buses and SkyTrains. These poems also appear on a Haiku Stone installed in 2008 at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden. The stone features winners from the 2006, 2007, and 2008 Haiku Invitationals. The following commentary refers to the stone as a “Haiku Rock,” but apparently a rock becomes a stone, in garden settings, when it is moved from an original location to a new location or becomes hand-hewn. See also my commentary for 2006, 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2024. +

Judges’ Comments
on the 2008 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational

by Carole MacRury, Michael Dylan Welch, and Edward Zuk

“The primary purpose of reading and writing haiku is sharing moments of our lives that have moved us, pieces of experience and perception that we offer or receive as gifts. At the deepest level, this is the one great purpose of all art, and especially of literature.”

—William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku

A common quality of poems selected for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s 2008 Haiku Invitational is how they capture moving moments. The images move us as readers by conveying the feelings of experiencing blossoming cherries. These poems are gifts not only to the poets who wrote them, but to all of us who read them.

This year we expanded our selection categories to include a best British Columbia poem, in addition to best poems for Canada, the United States, elsewhere internationally, and for youth. It has been the haiku committee’s dream to have these winning poems engraved in stone. On April 3, 2008, this dream came true. The top 2008 poems, together with the top winners from 2007 and 2006, have been sandblasted into a stunning haiku rock at the new Honorable David Lam Cherry Grove at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden. We are grateful to the garden for providing a beautiful home for the haiku rock and to its staff for expert installation. We also thank Northwest Landscape and Stone Supply for donating the beautiful basalt column, and thank Bob Tiller and his staff for sandblasting the winning poems into the stone. Generations of visitors can now enjoy these poems in a spectacular garden setting. If you live in or near Vancouver, or might ever visit, we hope you will take the opportunity to see the garden so you can enjoy the haiku rock yourself.

For this year’s Haiku Invitational, we received nearly 800 haiku. They came from 36 countries, our most yet, including Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Kenya, Nepal, Israel, South Africa, and many other countries. In addition to our selection of the top five haiku, which we comment on individually below, we’ve also selected a large number of Sakura Award winners and Honourable Mentions for adults and youth. We are pleased to offer our congratulations to these poets and our thanks to everyone who entered.

The real prize, of course, is writing the poetry itself—and being more keenly aware, through haiku, of the seasonal changes around you. As the cherry trees bud and blossom in spring, or as you recall this fleeting time in other seasons, we encourage you to write new haiku for your own enjoyment, and possibly to submit for our festival next year. We are grateful for your gifts of haiku and look forward to new exchanges in the years ahead.

Carole MacRury, Michael Dylan Welch, and Edward Zuk, judges

Best British Columbia Poem

late for work—

cherry petals

in my hair

Jessica Tremblay

Burnaby, British Columbia

This poem presents a clear image with utterly direct and simple words. Jessica Tremblay tells us she is late for work and that cherry petals adorn her hair. It is easy to understand that the beauty of the cherry blossoms has entranced her so much that they’ve made her late for her daily obligation. Not only is she late for work because she’s been enjoying the blossoms, she doesn’t even brush them from her hair, thus prolonging her appreciation of their splendor.

—Michael Dylan Welch

Best Canadian Poem

a winter blizzard

I turn my calendar

to cherry blossoms

Marilyn Potter

Toronto, Ontario

Marilyn Potter’s haiku is unusual for evoking cherry blossoms out of season. The poem is set in winter, yet cherry blossoms are still present in the mind of the poet, who turns to them for relief while being snowed in. I admired this haiku not only for the surprising appearance of the blossoms, but also for its longing for the cherry trees, spring, and everything that they represent. I also liked how an iconic Canadian experience, a blizzard, is connected to the cherry blossoms in a natural way.

—Edward Zuk

Best U.S. Poem

cherry blossoms

the baby’s hair too fine

to hold a ribbon

Ferris Gilli

Marietta, Georgia

The image here is one of a young family under the cherry blossoms, perhaps enjoying a picnic. It’s a celebratory sort of day, and a parent or grandparent feels an impulse to decorate the baby’s hair with a ribbon. The baby is still too young to have grown thick-enough hair, a fact that echoes the newness and ephemerality of the cherry blossoms they’re enjoying. The leap we make between the poem’s two parts enables us to feel, without being told, the joyousness and beauty of the occasion, tinged with the melancholy feeling that accompanies an awareness of fleeting beauty.

—Michael Dylan Welch

Best International Poem

in clearing mist

the creaking of a heavy oar . . .

cherry blossoms

Tito (Stephen Henry Gill)

Kyoto, Japan

This haiku’s subtle and sensory word choices capture the essence of a single moment in time, and the poem continues to reverberate long after we read the last line. This poem resonates not only with the sound of the oar but also with the oar’s heaviness juxtaposed against the lightness of mist and blossoms. Even the rhythm of the language evokes the slow stroking of oars. Our senses are heightened, as they would be in a mist, and we are placed immediately into this moment from real life. Both the spirit of haiku and the spirit of the cherry blossom season abound in this excellent and enduring haiku.

—Carole MacRury

Best Youth Poem

evening prayer—

the cherry petals stick

to the pane

Damian Margolak (age 16)

Kielce, Poland

In Japan, the cherry blossom is often connected with spiritual experiences. In a famous waka (31-syllable poem), the poet Saigyo (1118–1190) wishes to be buried among his beloved cherry blossoms so that he can be with them even in death:

I pray that I will die beneath the blossoming cherry,

In spring, the month of flowers,

When the moon is full.

(modified slightly from a translation by Daisetz Suzuki)

Damian Margolak’s haiku also links the cherry blossoms to a spiritual longing. Although there would seem to be little connection between the blossoms and a prayer, we are meant to feel that deep and powerful forces are at work in the juxtaposition of the two images. In particular, we are left to wonder whether the petals on the windowpane are themselves an answer to the prayer or if they are, perhaps, a sign of what is to come.

—Edward Zuk

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