Haiku Society of America

Haiku Society of America

Merit Books Awards for 2025

Patricia J. Machmiller and Scott Mason, judges
judges' comments to be published in Frogpond then on the web site

The state of English-language haiku and its related forms would appear to be robust based on the sheer quantity and variety of works submitted this year for these awards, and on the high proportion of those we each considered of good or better quality. Our task was therefore both pleasurable and challenging.

That was nowhere more so than in the category of individual haiku collections. We could only recognize a total of seven, though a strong case could have been made for an equal number of others. Our ultimate criteria were these two: our shared assessment of the overall quality of the poems in each volume; and the degree to which we felt that each such volume offered a materially enhanced reading experience as a collection (since these are, after all, book awards). In some cases that enhanced reading experience flowed from a book’s treatment of a particular subject or theme, or from some other discernible organizing principle; in other instances, the poems in a collection simply cohered while they also grew in their cumulative effect.

We thank the Haiku Society of America for entrusting us with this important task; we congratulate those whose work is recognized here; and we honor all who shared their experiences and insights in the dozens of books we were privileged to read.

 
HAIKU BOOK AWARDS:

First Place

Francine Banwarth. Bare Necessities: Selected Haiku of Francine Banwarth. Taylorville, IL; Brooks Books, 2024

Francine Banwarth has been writing memorable haiku for the better part of four decades, yet this is her first collection. It was worth the wait. Edited by publishers Randy and Shirley Brooks, with input from other prominent poets (including Banwarth’s haiku mentor, the late Bill Pauly), the poems are arranged chronologically by date of first publication. Although this might seem an unpromising approach, Banwarth learned early “to write your life, to not hold back,” so her collection displays the overall arc, and possesses the natural feel, of a life lived and witnessed with complete authenticity. Banwarth meets the world unflinchingly with open eyes, and she writes with an open heart. One could ask for no wiser or more compassionate guide.

            storytime
            she wants the one we read
            yesternight

            solstice night
            I take
            what is offered

~ ~ ~

Second Place

Jennifer Hambrick. A Silence or Two. Winchester, VA; Red Moon Press, 2024

A Silence or Two is a love story as told by the woman—a story of longing,

            quiet evening a candle flame in the imperative

passion,
 
            his fingers
            touching the insides
            of eternity
 
two miscarriages,
 
            broken stars
            deep in the sonogram
            a silence or two
 
isolation,
 
            dead water
            inside the prison
            unvoiced labials
 
and grief.
 
            corpse flower the night at my throat

The haiku are usually in the form of a concrete image paired with an abstraction. This technique allows the reader to come close, to feel the intimacy of the moment, and yet, things are not always clear—it is as though we are fumbling, seeing through a gauze curtain. Which gives rise to feelings of confusion and being at a loss. And herein lies the brilliance of the writer for she has created a text that allows the reader to experience, in addition to loss and grief and remorse, the feelings of confusion, frustration, and even despair that one would feel when the body has twice betrayed its promise.

The book is broken into sections using an enigmatic small square that could represent some kind of monitor. Each time it appears it is a bit different with horizontal lines that are suggestive of white noise, or a sonogram, possibly, or a vital signs monitor. The abstract nature of the section divider fits with the text and the book as a whole.

slicing the noun out of the future mother

~ ~ ~

Third Place

Debbie Strange. Random Blue Sparks. Ormskirk, Great Britain; Snapshot Press., 2024

In Arctic Dreams the biologist Barry Lopez wrote that landscape shapes our imagination. Debbie Strange has lived in western Canada all her life where her sense of place has been finely honed; so too are her haiku that come from this lived experience. With amazingly precise and beautiful language Strange writes of the “undersong of a thrush,” “the iridescent sound of morning,” and the “grace notes” of a meadowlark. She writes of a landscape of coulees, auroras, and parhelions. The natural world comes alive in her haiku where we meet capelin, orcas, thunderbugs, scarlet tanagers, witches’ butter, puffballs, trilliums, and almost-white tundra hares. Each treated with clear, yet surprisingly fresh language. You’ve probably met a woolly aphid or two in your backyard, but from the title poem (“dead orchard / random blue sparks / of woolly aphids”) you’ll learn they sometimes come in blue. The book itself produced by Snapshot Press is a pleasure to hold and to read.

firelight
knitting another length
of silence

marsh reeds
we learn the secret
language of wind

~ ~ ~

 

Honorable Mentions (not ranked but in alphabetical order by author)

Roberta Beary. Carousel. Ormskirk, Great Britain; Snapshot Press., 2024

The arc of Roberta Beary’s Carousel is her life—childhood, the teen years, sexual awareness, pregnancy, marriage, betrayal. Then loss—father, mother, divorce, suicide, a dog. Meanwhile a new love and marriage. Grief. Reflection. And looking forward. The sequence is told in a little over 80 haiku. A masterwork of concision and precision with poems deftly arranged to create the narrative. Carousel is a beautifully produced book that feels good to hold in one’s hand.

closing time
winter dusk slides down
the book drop

 

Deborah P Kolodji. Vital Signs. Cuttlefish Books, 2024

In her final year of a long battle with cancer, Deborah P Kolodji, a master of the haiku form, used it as a vehicle for her creative spirit to set down the ins and outs of living a physically challenged life. Vital Signs documents her final days—days of doctoring, medical exams, chemo infusions, hospitalizations, and the respites in between. This journey that she shares is amazingly clear-eyed and brave. There is no self-pity—only persistence, grit, and a few moments of wry humor. In the context of this book its title “vital signs” takes on a meaning much larger than measuring one’s pulse and blood pressure—it expands and becomes a signpost for how, with spirit and fortitude, to run through the tape.

the blush of dawn
through a hospital window
vital signs

 

paul m. Magnolia Diary. Champaign, IL; Modern Haiku Press, 2024

This latest volume by esteemed haiku poet and editor Paul Miller follows the traditional arrangement by seasons and features ostensibly normative haiku. But that arrangement becomes artful orchestration here, displaying a maestro’s touch; and the poems themselves, while never showy, sparkle with subtle insight and charm.

a paperweight
of sorts
summer fly

tidal flat
some of the sea
between her shoulders

 

Peter Yovu. Shine Shadow. Winchester, VA; Red Moon Press, 2024

Peter Yovu’s gloriously unconventional yet strangely faithful take on routine moments and encounters is on full display in this notable collection of haiku, haibun and other short verse, all interwoven. Individual poems here, while unabashedly personal, speak powerfully to common feelings and experience.

alone
a meadow
makes me its weed

waking in your arms
was I ever
this born?

~ ~ ~

HAIKU ANTHOLOGY AWARDS:

Best

Janice Doppler, editor. One Thread: Zoka in Contemporary Haiku. Massachusetts; self-published, 2024

A themed anthology but much more, One Thread represents a multi-layered exploration – in theory and in haiku practice – of zoka, a slippery term from the Japanese which is sometimes defined as “the creative force of nature,” or simply “the creative,” and used to suggest the dynamic and interconnected workings within our world and the universe beyond. The first section of this ambitious volume looks backward to the Eastern origins and religious underpinnings of zoka, supplementing essays with examples of zoka-infused works from poetry and art. In the second major section, editor Janice Doppler has enlisted an impressive roster of international haiku poets to individually reflect on zoka and furnish examples from their own practices. While this important volume will not “resolve” exactly what zoka is and how it operates (as Doppler readily acknowledges), it brings useful attention to the concept, in the process making a significant contribution to haiku scholarship and rendering a genuine service to the community of haiku poets.

 

Honorable Mentions

Susan Antolin, Garry Gay, and Carolyn Hall, editors. The San Francisco Haiku Anthology, Volume Two. Spare Poems Press 2024

The editors of The San Francisco Haiku Anthology, Vol. Two, call this edition a companion to its predecessor, The San Francisco Haiku Anthology, Vol. One, edited by Jerry Ball, Garry Gay, and Tom Tico. It has been thirty-two years since Volume One was published featuring fifty-seven poets. The newest volume has been carefully vetted and curated by a trio of seasoned haiku poets from the Bay Area. It features ninety-four poets including seventeen of the poets in Volume One. Its reach is wide including newcomers to the region’s haiku scene alongside old hands. If Volume One served as a demarcation point for Bay Area haiku, then Volume Two documents the generational shift as well as the profusion of haiku writers. The book has the definite feel of California—not so much in the ambiance of place (though there is that), but in the wide variety of forms. From Abe to Zimmerman readers will find every haiku style—traditional, modern, gendai, one-line, concrete, nature-oriented, or human-focused—freely used. Some examples:
 
ants out of a hole—
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

Fay Aoyagi

 

flagging down my doppelganger even if

Susan Diridoni

 

old globe
the two hemispheres
coming apart

David Grayson

 

a fish jumps
                     from it, into it . . .
evening stillness

Christopher Herold

 

end of a long day
the old bartender’s feet
take the floorboards home

Jerry Kilbride

 

              palms to the sky
                                                bringing me
this autumn night
                                                to my knees

Beverly Acuff Momoi

 

first ride
                 without the training wheels—
                                           summer breeze

Marianna Monaco

 

clay class
the child who works so slowly
makes a turtle

Linda Papanicolaou

 

as I turn the page
Napoleon leaves Moscow
fading winter light

J. Zimmerman

~ ~ ~

HAIBUN BOOK AWARDS:

Best

Bob Lucky. My Wife & Other Adventures. Winchester, VA; Red Moon Press, 2024

A travel book.  And what a ride! “Adventure is just bad planning”—this is Lucky quoting a new acquaintance of his, Mr. Meng in China, who is quoting the Antarctic explorer, Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole. From Bahrain to Korea to Portugal to Trieste and many stops in between, Lucky’s Adventures is a page turner. It’s not as much about the places and sites he sees as it is about the people he meets and the experiences he has of being a traveler—of being disoriented, of finding the museum closed on Monday, of stumbling over language differences, of having an un capo in b as a cure for loneliness, and always of anticipating what’s next. There’s Christmas in Kathmandu and Ramazan in Istanbul.  A long haibun sequence about experiences in Trieste closes the book. Curiously, Lucky starts the sequence with his departure and ends it with his arrival. In this way the book closes with the sense of expectancy and excitement that comes with landing in a new place and the tingle of “adventure ahead” that comes with it.

scattered clouds
the James Joyce statue
posing with tourists

 

Honorable Mention

Joe McKeon. A Man on Horseback. Winchester, VA; Red Moon Press, 2024

Joe McKeon plumbed his varied and colorful personal past in the fine haiku collection Oars Up (2019), and here he returns to that wellspring through haibun with equally accomplished results. In each pithy piece, the title, prose and poem(s) play off one another masterfully for richer meaning and greater overall effect (a conscious aim, as we learn in the author’s Foreword) – the best of them depth charges masquerading as bonbons.

~ ~ ~

About Our 2024 Judges:

Scott Mason is ia former longtime associate editor with The Heron's Nest (2011 - 2021), He  currently serves on the board of The Haiku Foundation. His book The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes received the Kirkus Star from Kirkus Reviews, the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award from The Haiku Foundation, and a Merit Book Award (Best Prose) from the Haiku Society of America. His own haiku have placed first in more than two dozen competitions.
 
Patricia J. Machmiller is coauthor of “Dojin’s Corner,” a column of haiku commentary in Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s Geppo. She has two books of haiku, Blush of Winter Moon and Utopia: She Hurries On plus a book on haiku-writing, Zigzag of the Dragonfly: Writing the Haiku Way, and a book of haibun, Grace. Twice she has received the Touchstone Award for Haiku. She served as First Vice President of HSA (2016) and is currently on the Planning Committee for Haiku North America.

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