The organisers of the Trailblazer Contest have challenged writers to use haiku, or tanka, in new and unusual ways. They’ve challenged writers to incorporate the essence of these Japanese forms into contemporary poetry that is fresh and innovative. You can visit the Trailblazer Contest website here.

I was fortunate to have one of my haiku shuffle poems selected as a winner of the 2023 Haiku Trailblazer Contest. You can read the judging panel’s comments here. In part, they noted that:

a Haiku Shuffle . . . involves a series of fragments and phrases arranged like building blocks in a way that creates both individual haiku and a longer-form poem that feels reminiscent of free verse poetry

The panel also commented that:

As the images and word patterns repeat, the reader is drawn more deeply into the scene in an almost meditative way.

This multi-ku is expansive of the haiku form while maintaining the classic aesthetics of image-based observations captured in the moment.

My winning haiku shuffle was a poem titled Gundaroo, which is an Australian village in the State of New South Wales.

Gundaroo

the bob of a silvereye
drinking

sapphire sky

an old man
in a hat

wandering about

in the cemetery
grape hyacinths

a few sheets of iron
askew

in a rusty gutter
the bob of a silvereye
drinking

on the road out of town

an old man
in a hat

Thank you to the Trailblazer Contest judging panel for selecting my poem and for their kind comments. I believe the haiku shuffle is an interesting bridge between haiku and longer-form contemporary poetry, so I was very pleased to have one of these poems selected as a winner of the 2023 Trailblazer Contest.

If you wish to learn more about the haiku shuffle form, then please follow the link below to an earlier post of mine on the topic.