At seventeen syllables, haiku is the shortest poem in world literature. It is now also the most popular form of poetry in the world, written in nearly every language. And yet, as haiku has spread internationally, one of the most important aspects of the tradition has largely been lost—the community of poets.
In Europe and the United States, haiku is often regarded as the domain of literary elites, but this is not the case in Japan, where haiku is deeply rooted in communal activity. Millions of amateur Japanese poets belong to haiku groups (clubs, really), which are sponsored by different “schools” of haiku, each with its own magazine. Most daily and weekly newspapers carry a haiku column featuring poems submitted by their subscribers, sometimes on the front page.
To help bring back this social dimension, we are inviting our readers to participate in the monthly Tricycle Haiku Challenge. Each month, moderator Clark Strand will select three poems to be published online, one of which will appear with a brief commentary. Each quarter, one of these poems also will appear in the print magazine alongside an extended commentary. In this way, we can begin to follow the seasons together—spring, summer, fall, and winter—and share the joy of haiku together as a community.
Requirements:
Anyone can submit haiku to the monthly challenge using the form below. To be considered for publication, your haiku must:
- Be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables:
Getting the syllables of a haiku to sit naturally inside of its seventeen-syllable form is the primary challenge. Each haiku is a word problem in search of a satisfying seventeen-syllable solution. - Contain the “season word” assigned for that month:
A haiku isn’t only a word problem. To the seventeen syllables the poet must add a turn of thought that results in more than seventeen syllables of meaning—along with a word that refers to one of the four seasons. How the poet uses “season words” like autumn sun or dew will typically determine the effectiveness of the poem.
Part of the reason haiku appeals to so many people is that its rules are simple and easy to follow, yet it can take a lifetime to master them. Ten million people currently write haiku in Japanese. There is no reason why millions can’t write haiku in English, too, provided they agree on the basics. The turn of thought you add to that simple formula of 5-7-5 syllables with a season word is entirely up to you.
Submissions close on the last day of the month at 11:59 pm ET, and the results will be posted the week after. Monthly submissions are anonymized and the winning poems are selected in a blind process.
To learn more about the history and principles of haiku, check out Clark Strand’s online course with Tricycle, “Learn to Write Haiku: Mastering the Ancient Art of Serious Play.”
This Month’s Season Word:
Submit as many haiku as you please using the submission form below. Just be sure to include this month’s season word.
Winter season word: “The Old Year”
nothing we can do
to help it now the old year
is beyond our grasp
Submit as many haiku as you please on the season word “The Old Year.” 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 words “The Old Year.”
Haiku Tip: Celebrate the Fifth Season!
The Japanese haiku tradition includes five seasons instead of the usual four. To spring, summer, autumn, and winter, Japanese poets add a category called “The New Year.”
Because it is so heavily weighted toward human affairs, the list of traditional season words for the New Year doesn’t include many plants, animals, or meteorological phenomena. Most New Year’s topics concern foods, customs, clothing, or rituals.
Many of these words don’t translate well into English, where native speakers have no cultural context for them. The list of “firsts,” for instance: “first calligraphy,” “first smile,” “first laughter,” “first dream.” The last, in particular, has a long tradition. The first dream was thought to contain prophecies for the coming year. The most auspicious dreams would feature Mount Fuji, a hawk, or an eggplant.
The New Year has its own two-week holiday in Japan with lots of associated activities—especially around the home. In Basho’s day, it was celebrated at the beginning of spring but shifted to earlier in the year when Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873.
In the English-speaking world there are New Year’s season words as well. Examples would be “countdown,” “popping the cork,” “watching the ball drop,” “new diary/calendar,” “(making) resolutions,” or singing “Auld Lang Syne.” But the most popular words are just what you would expect: “Old Year,” “New Year,” and “New Year’s Eve.”
This month’s season word is unique in that it refers to something that cannot be experienced in the present. We can experience New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in real time. The Old Year is different: it refers to the previous calendar year once the new calendar has been flipped to its first page. The experience is therefore retrospective and usually somewhat reflective. In short, this is a backwards-glancing word.
In art and literature, the old year has often been personified as an old man, whereas the new year is seen as an infant. This echoes one of the most ancient ideas in Western culture, sometimes called “The Allegory of the Seasons.”
In the Allegory of the Seasons, spring is birth and childhood, while summer is adolescence, autumn is maturity, and winter is old age and death. The old year departs into the past in order to make way for the future. After which the cycle begins again.
A poem by the English poet John Clare (1793-1864) begins as follows:
The Old Year’s gone away
To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
In either shade or sun:
The last year he’d a neighbour’s face,
In this he’s known by none.
There is a lot to play with here in crafting that little pivot of thought that makes for a good haiku. There is, after all, something mysterious about the old year. We remember it, sometimes vividly, even though it is forever over and done with now. It’s heavy, but also weightless. Gone, but somehow still present to the mind.
November’s Winning Poem:
Fall season word: “Scarecrow”
this world we live in
ten thousand scarecrows on guard
and only one bird
—Gregory Tullock
You can find the honorable mentions, additional commentary, and November’s haiku tips here.
Previous Winners
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2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
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2024 |
2025 |
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December |
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