Haiku Society of America

Haiku Society of America Student Haiku Awards
in Memorial of Nicholas A. Virgilio

Anna Eklund-Cheong and Scott Wiggerman
judges

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Here are the winning haiku writers:

Justin So
Paideia School, 8th grade

Seby Ciobica
Elena Rares School, 7th grade

Sialavene Lutali
Pacific Horizons School, 12th grade

Luna Rodriguez
Sage Hill School, 12th grade

David Maica
Elena Rares School, 8th grade

Luca Bobeica
Elena Rares School, 8th grade

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mixtape
the sound
of dad’s memories

Justin So
Paideia School, 8th grade

Ah, mixtapes!  Decades before anyone curated playlists on Spotify, young people recorded carefully chosen sequences of songs on cassette tapes, often directly from the radio. They (we?) brought mixtapes to parties and shared them with friends. This tiny poem is an effective example of how readers must enter a haiku and complete the implied story using their own imaginations, coming up with their own interpretations. Is someone listening to Dad's mixtapes with Dad, sharing a special moment? Or has someone’s father passed away, and this mixtape, discovered among his belongings, now has special meaning for his grief-stricken children? Perhaps Dad is in a memory-care home, and as the music therapist pushes the play button on the old tape player, Dad starts singing along to songs he rocked to decades ago? The idea of listening to the sound of someone’s memories through music is unusual and effective for that reason. This haiku plucks our heartstrings with only six words composed of nine syllables. (AEC)

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moving day
leaving my heart
on the old oak

Seby Ciobica
Elena Rares School, 7th grade

I detected a subtle double entendre in the first line. A moving day might mean a day charged with emotion, or it could mean the day someone relocates to a new home.  Moving day can be exciting, heartbreaking, or both. We often feel nostalgia for our former homes, and a bit of tristesse about what we had to leave behind, including perhaps the old oak tree on which we carved a heart encircling our initials and those of our first crush.  This lovely haiku (some might say senryu) elicits a nearly universal emotion in just nine words composed of eleven syllables. (AEC)

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power outage
stars crowd closer
than neighbors

Sialavene Lutali
Pacific Horizons School, 12th grade

Tell us something is awe-inspiring without saying “awe-inspiring.” This haiku almost made me gasp with its evocation of awe. Everyone should have an opportunity to experience how stars seem crowded closely together in a truly dark sky—even if it must happen during a power outage! This keenly perceived scene took me back to my childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, when all the neighbors would come out of their basements and meet in the streets after summer night thunderstorms and tornadoes, when the power had gone out. We gathered closely to see if everyone was okay, or needed any help; if everyone had matches for their candles, and batteries for their flashlights. For us kids, power outages at night were exciting. And the stars! There were so many more stars shining between the shreds of racing clouds than we had ever imagined. The effectiveness of this haiku lies in its use of strong, juxtaposed images that describe an ordinary event in an unexpected way. (AEC)

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night market rain
Singapore steam rising
from paper bowls

Luna Rodriguez
Sage Hill School, 12th grade

This haiku is a marvel of sensory delight! The sound of rain, the feel of humidity, the sight of steam—which also suggests the anticipatory smell and taste of food—this author manages to bring in all five senses in a mere nine words, not an easy accomplishment. The poem begins by setting a dreary scene, but shifts to a Singapore setting, where the heat rises from the ground as well as the hot food (Singapore noodles?) but then returns to the notion of the sogginess of paper bowls. There is a joy that accompanies this scene despite the rain and darkness saturating the scene, lovely and evocative imagery throughout. (SW)

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spring fever
my sister dresses her doll
in light green

David Maica
Elena Rares School, 8th grade

The season comes out in the first line, but by combining spring with fever, we are given two options with this fragment: an illness during spring or that restlessness felt at the long-awaited spring. Either way, the phrase part of this senryu satisfies. We can picture a sick sister unable to go out and play who at least can dress her doll in the colors she witnesses from her window (light green also suggests a sickly color for a person). Or we can view the anticipation of getting out in the freshly green environment by the sister dressing her doll in the appropriate shade, just as we recently put on our green in March. Somehow the author also conveys the observing sister as being older and loving, whether her younger sister is sick or well. (SW)

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snowy field
a crow scribbling
the sunset

Luca Bobeica
Elena Rares School, 8th grade

This haiku is a fine example of the use of juxtaposition. We can sense the yin and yang of the white field and the black crow, the gentleness of the snow and the activity of the crow. We see the white and black again in the sunset, as the day moves into night—one does not exist without the other. But in a genre that is known as noun-centric, this haiku employs a stunning verb, “scribbling,” a perfect active counterpart to the passivity of the snowy field. Instead of the snow appearing in the sky, it’s the crow in an act of play, randomly scribbling his black feathers across the sunset, an exquisite image that almost reduces the sunset to black and white, the initial yin and yang images more powerful than color. (SW)

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About our 2026 judges:

Anna Eklund-Cheong, originally from St. Paul, MN, now divides her time between her homes in Maryland and France, where she offers haiku classes for adults and children. Her haiku have appeared in Blithe Spirit, Presence, The Heron’s Nest, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Cattails, Tinywords, and other journals. Another dozen haiku have been displayed in Washington, DC’s flower boxes as part of the annual Golden Triangle Haiku contests.  Anna published her first collection of haiku in 2025, entitled From Little Acorns: 101 Modern Haiku to Discover at Home and in the Classroom. She’s on social media platforms as “Paris Haiku.”

Scott Wiggerman, an Albuquerque poet and artist, is the author of four books of poetry, including his newest, Beginning and Ending with Emily: Ghazals and Golden Shovels, a collection inspired by lines and themes of Emily Dickinson. Wiggerman is the co-organizer of the annual Albuquerque Poets' Picnic at the Open Space Visitor Center, which includes a hand-stitched chapbook of haiku and hundreds of haiku Weathergrams hanging from trees.  He serves as chair of the Albuquerque chapter of the Haiku Society of America. For two decades he has been co-editor at Dos Gatos Press,  a small press which has produced numerous books of Southwestern U.S. poetry.