Best of the Haiku Challenge (May 2026)

In myth and folklore, violets are symbolic of purity, fidelity, and modest beauty. But in haiku they are most often associated with a feeling of wonder at the regenerative power of the Earth. Last month’s winning and honorable mention haiku celebrated the power of these simple flowers to awaken the heart in spring.

• Sari Grandstaff’s violets flower alongside graffiti in an “abandoned” space forgotten by the rest of the world.
• Valerie Rosenfeld experiences the return of spring after months when it felt like violets “never existed” at all.
• Benjamin Bläsi finds luminous beauty in a wild corner of the city where violets “gleam with sunshine and dew.”

Congratulations to all! To read additional poems of merit from recent months, visit our Tricycle Haiku Challenge group on Facebook.

You can submit a haiku for the current challenge here.

Spring Season Word: Violet

WINNER:

abandoned drainpipe
except for the violets
and the graffiti

–Sari Grandstaff

Nature loves a ruin. Whatever was created by human beings doesn’t cease to exist when humans have no further use for it. Abandoned houses become homes for squirrels, raccoons, or other creatures. When it rains, a drainpipe moistens the earth for the wildflowers below a culvert, even if the road above it has been closed for many years.

Abandoned spaces usually produce feelings like “melancholy beauty” in haiku poetry, or “a wistfulness for the passage of time.” Buddhist readers regard them as signs of impermanence. But those interpretations only scratch the surface of last month’s winning poem.

The poet, who founded International Haiku Poetry Day in 2007, has been perfecting her craft for many years. This shows not only in the restrained simplicity of her haiku but also in its juxtaposition of images.

A free verse poet might have stopped after the first twelve syllables, leaving us with the refreshing (though slightly sad) image of violets growing wild in a derelict urban or suburban setting. But then there would be little to distinguish the poem from those flat little nature portraits that appear regularly in the magazines devoted to haiku of that kind.

The spray-painted lines and colors of the graffiti restore an active human presence to the poem, giving it dimensionality and real emotion. They also provide a turn of thought.

Graffiti is fundamentally anarchic—with no utility or productive purpose. In fact, it stands opposed to these. Like the spring violets, the artist is drawn to the blank, unused spaces—to places left unguarded by the human world.

Is the painting a work of art or an act of vandalism? The answer isn’t clear. But the return of the human to a scene from which it has long been absent raises profound questions for the 21st century, even if the poet hasn’t provided any answers.

Is this what it feels like to rewild the heart?

Is there a value beyond productivity, purpose, or utility?

Who will we be when all that we have made is gone?

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

a few months ago
it was as if violets
never existed

–Valerie Rosenfeld

city violets:
in a wild corner they gleam
with sunshine and dew

–Benjamin Bläsi

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You can find more on May’s season word, as well as relevant haiku tips, in last month’s challenge below:

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Spring season word: “Violet”

to make that color
you’d think its roots were deeper
common violet

Submit as many haiku as you wish that include the season word “violet.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word* and try to stay close to that.

*REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the word “violet.”

Haiku Tip: Join the Great Reality!

To master haiku is to live so fully within its two basic conventions that they become the principal imaginative endeavor of our lives. It means that we live, eat, breathe, sleep, work, and eventually die inside of those conventions, using them to express every aspect of our experience.

The first convention of haiku, the fixed 5-7-5 syllable pattern, reminds us that all things express themselves through form. A wild rose has five petals. The heart has four chambers. The primary colors, three in number, combine to make all of the rest. There is infinite variety in Nature, but all of it fits into the greater pattern of the whole. Everything has a form.

Given time and practice, the 5-7-5 syllable form enters so deeply into our consciousness it transforms our consciousness, giving us “a mind to follow Nature and return to Nature,” which Bashō claimed was the secret of all great art.

The second convention, the use of season words, binds us to the wisdom of Nature. Just as all beings exist within the limits established by their form, they exist in relationship to all other beings because of Time. Nothing is static. What goes up comes down. Whatever eats is eaten.

For the haiku poet, the whole universe is constantly becoming—forever dying and being reborn. The season words anchor us in that Great Reality, showing us that we belong to it, and showing us where to belong.

There is much more that we can say about mastering haiku, but this is the pith of it. It takes a lifetime. Or many lifetimes. So it’s best to be patient and stay focused on the basics. The rest will come as it will.

A word about violets: First of all, vi•o•let has three syllables. These are spoken so quickly and so close together that the ear sometimes hears them as one. Violets bloom from March through June in most temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, but are found in Australia, New Zealand, and the Andes as well. In Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, William J. Higginson observes that violets range in color from white to yellow to blue, but notes that “the word ‘violet’ will always be taken to mean one of the many blue or ‘violet-colored’ violets unless something else is specified.”

One of the most traditional signs of spring, violets have an unusually broad range of symbolic meanings. Because they are small in size and grow close to the ground, they have often been associated with humility, while their return each spring connects them with faithfulness and fidelity. Additionally, they may symbolize transformation, transcendence, tranquility, grief, sacrifice, or peace. Violets were used in love potions and sleeping potions and in creation of many perfumes. Because they are edible, they are often added to salads. Violets are a natural source of Vitamins A and C.