Haiku Society of America

Haiku Society of America Senryu Award
in Memorial of Gerald M. Brady

Judges Commentary for 2026

Kat Lehmann & Gideon Young

 

~ First Place ~

 
can’t stop thinking about her kudzu

John Ward Hocter, Hilliard, OH

We can’t stop thinking about this senryu and how it captures a deep experience succinctly as a single line of few words. Regular readers and writers of short single line poems will agree with their difficulty to compose and craft. This poem succeeds.

The poem opens its arms to the reader, inviting us into a world of thoughtfulness. Perhaps this is a love poem. Perhaps this is a love poem from a child to their mother, thinking of her overgrown house. Perhaps this is a love poem for a home. Perhaps this is a love poem for Medusa’s hair. Perhaps this is not a love poem. The space for the reader’s understanding is rich and wide.

There are at least two overlapping reads that are in conversation and enhance the poem’s meaning. The read “can’t stop thinking about her / kudzu” creates a metaphor that compares an invasive species to invasive thoughts. The speaker’s thoughts about her are covering the landscape of their life. In another reading “can’t stop thinking about her kudzu” we see a different comparison. Perhaps she has overgrown hair or uncommon expressions of beauty, which emphasizes the individuality of aesthetics and taste. Together, we see that the speaker is obsessed with someone who is uniquely theirs to love.

Note that the “I” is understood and works to increase the immediacy and speed of reading, like a half-thought in this rumination.

This poem is musically outstanding. The rhythm of this poem’s word’s syllables is 1-1-2-2-1-2, which creates a movement-forward energy, almost accelerating in its rhythmic expectations, perhaps like kudzu might grow in the American south. Interestingly, the one syllable words create a powerful statement/poem on their own. The two-syllable words create a moment connected to nature. Mixing and matching these two like-syllable phrases also create poems. Try it. There is a depth of topical focus here. A stark, well-woven senryu.

 

~ Second Place ~

the day
it becomes pronounceable
metastasis

Mary Stevens, Hurley, NY

We misread this senryu at first, changing it to “the day / it becomes unpronounceable” in a possible reference to being diagnosed with a long disease name, or so we thought. But the poem is “the day / it becomes pronounceable.” Metastasis is not a simple word, sure. Undoubtedly, hearing doctors speak a word lends an unfortunate familiarity that would help to pronounce it correctly. But a deeper emotional truth is evident here. The previously unspeakable tragedy has found a level of acceptance. Let us say the word. There is a strength and deep bravery here in speaking its name clearly. The legal meaning of “pronounce” refers to a formal declaration or ruling. “The day / it becomes pronounceable” could also refer to the day the diagnosis or doctor’s “pronouncement” was revealed. In this deep senryu, we feel both the moment a diagnosis is received from a doctor and the empowering response to the news.

 

~ Third Place ~

death anniversary
the weight of hay
still in the field

Lorraine A Padden, San Diego, CA

Much of the powerful wisdom in this poem comes from its variable and layered juxtaposition. The poem begins with two words not often paired. “Death” is a complex word containing our human synonymity with “end,” as well as the vastness of our unknowing of “death.” Whereas, “anniversary” is a word more regularly used with happy occasions of life: weddings, beginnings, civic events. Anniversary is a known point on a known timeline. In the first short line of this poem, we, the readers, are immediately in a space of mental unexpectedness, and therefore, in a space of ideological reception, of “walking-the-line,” of being ready for new understanding. An outstanding fragment that opens the door to its profound phrase, allowing the reader into its world.

This poem solidifies itself in its narrative and environment with its phrase, “the weight of hay / still in the field.” Neither of us is a farmer, but we both pass by hay bales on our regular drives to and through our respective towns. We have seen hay fields stretching beyond view.

The weight of hay here is immeasurable. It is grief. It is picking yourself back up again. It is the grief and resolution that waits. It is waiting. We don’t know how many anniversaries there have been, we don’t know how many death anniversaries there will be. What will the speaker of this poem do with the work that remains?

The wonderful euphony (weight/hay; still/field) is understated as is this deep expression of grief. This poem ends quietly. We readers, like perhaps the hay in the field, are still.

 

~ Honorable Mention ~

hers was always
the first Christmas card
early onset

Alan Bridges, Bellingham, WA

This senryu especially utilizes musicality and juxtaposition to fine-tune its lovely, heart-felt self. The regular “s” and “r” sounds carry the reader all the way through the poem’s narrative, adding a reassuring rhythm, which comes to a hard stop with the “t” in onset. The effect is mirrored in the abrupt shift in tone, with onset, which suddenly deposits the reader in a storyline of mental or medical health, after beginning the poem with traditionally comforting details: Christmas, Christmas cards, the type of organization, work ethic, and caring it takes to be first to send Christmas cards. The past tense “was” indicates that this selfless person is gone, and their loss continues to be deeply felt. A poem worth rereading again and again, as the end of the poem affects how we reread the beginning, creating a loop of deepening understanding, and perhaps in some way, juxtaposes while it mirrors, with how those with early onset dementia, and other early onset diseases, might experience loops of worsening symptoms.

 

~ Honorable Mention ~

 
balancing on a long slow breaking wave fatherhood

Bruce H. Feingold, Berkeley, CA

This one-line senryu takes on the concrete character of a surfboard and is strengthened by its repeated sounds (on/long/slow; breaking/wave). Even the two -ings add to the euphony and cohesiveness of the poem. Well-wrought, this poem also contains the imagery of bodysurfing, and the speaker being the foam atop the wave, and the view of the eye proceeding down the wave while being in the ocean in the wave. An iridescent kaleidoscope of movement.

This “balancing on fatherhood” could be read from either the perspective of the father who continually adjusts to his child’s needs as those needs evolve, or from the perspective of a child who has benefited from the long devotion of their father, on whose shoulders they rest. In either interpretation, time’s wave rolls forward and love continually adjusts to balance on it.

 

~ Honorable Mention ~

after her death . . .
still stepping over
sidewalk cracks

Jacquie Pearce, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Even in its first reading, this poem time travels. We are brought into a world of loving childhood, and perhaps even the idyllic naiveté of youth, while simultaneously walking a path of loss and sorrow.

The judges were particularly impressed with the writer’s use of ellipses both offering their oft-meaning, in Japanese short form poetry, of time passing, and providing a visual of spaced-apart footsteps, the invisible cracks between.

The poem ends on a note of hope and possibility. Despite their mother’s death, the speaker/persona/human perspective/entity is continuing their careful respect, by avoiding cracks in the sidewalk, avoiding sharp shards sent towards mother’s spirit. The element of whimsy seeded in the childhood rhyme (singing in the reader’s mind) counterbalances the heaviness of a mother’s death, and serves as a platform for a belief, that in our collective after-death unknowing, anything is possible.

 

~ Honorable Mention ~

consulting room
I enter
a landscape picture

Mary Stevens, Hurley, NY

The structure of this senryu creates a mirror image, or a door, between L1 and L3, either of which can be paired with L2 "I enter." A decision point is created: do we enter the consulting room or the landscape picture? Where do we want to stay? It depends on what they tell us in that room. We envision the consulting room as being part of a medical clinic in which a patient awaits test results or imaging results. The fact that we must go into this dedicated room to hear the news is unnerving. As we stare at the landscape picture on the wall, it becomes an escape from bad news we hear, or we hope will not be spoken. Notably, the complicated emotional state of the one experiencing this scenario—the fear, uncertainty, and resilience—is depicted through the carefully chosen concrete images and structure. The reader is not told what to feel, which further elevates the poem.

 

~ Honorable Mention ~

twins crying—
for a brief moment
harmony

Louis Talbot, Epsom, United Kingdom

This senryu could be read with the view of an overwhelmed parent who notices that the cries of their two infants are randomly harmonizing! This humorous read is complemented by a heartfelt read in which the exhausted parent realizes this chaotic life is everything they wanted. The moment is all it should be, the beautifully imperfect perfection of parenthood. The em dash prevents the reading of “crying for a brief moment,” so we know these twins have been crying for a long time. This senryu succinctly communicates a complicated and layered, honest parenting moment.

 

~ ~ ~

 

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About the Judges:

Kat Lehmann is the author of six poetry collections, most recently the hybrid memoir A Beloved Fire Becomes the House (Red Moon Press, 2026). She is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for her debut haiku collection no matter how it ends a bluebird's song. Kat is a founder and editor at whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. A PhD former research biochemist, Kat enjoys experimenting with tiny poems, the storytelling possibilities of haibun, and her multi-haiku creations such as sudo-ku.
 
Gideon Young is a member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and the North Carolina Haiku Society. His debut chapbook Teacher won the 2025 Aquarius Press/Willow Books Poetry Chapbook Competition (2026) and his debut haiku collection my hands full of light was published by Backbone Press (2021). Gideon is co-editor of One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku, published by Unicorn Press (2017), winner of the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Award for Best Anthology, and co-author of a new collaborative anthology from Unicorn Press—Griots: Keepers of the Story; A Collection of Haibun (2026).