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Volume 35.2
Summer 2004

Robert Spiess Memorial
2004 Haiku Awards

As a memorial to Editor Bob Spiess, who died on March 13, 2002, Modern Haiku sponsors The Robert Spiess Memorial Award Haiku Competition.

The editors of Modern Haiku are honored to announce the winners of the second annual competition to commemorate the life and work of Robert Spiess.

The judges were Ce Rosenow and Lee Gurga. We received 191 entries from 104 poets.

Haiku were to be written in the spirit of the following Speculation from Spiess’s A Year’s Speculations on Haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 1995):

True haiku poets do not write to demonstrate how different their haiku are from those of other haiku poets. Goethe wrote, “I have reaped the harvest that others have sown. My work is that of a collective being and it bears Goethe’s name.”

The awards are as follows: First Prize: $100 plus a signed and previously-loved copy of Bob’s The Turtle’s Ears (1971, out of print, slight damage); Second Prize: $50 plus a copy of Bob’s The Shape of Water (1982); Third Prize: $25 plus a copy of Bob’s Some Sticks and Pebbles (2001). Three poets are awarded Honorable Mentions, and each will receive a copy of Bob’s A Year’s Speculations on Haiku (1995).

Special thanks to Billie Wilson for the idea of a competition to remember Bob Spiess and for all her hard work as contest coordinator.

 

2004 First Prize:

Autumn woods
yesterday’s walking stick
just where I left it

Garry Gay

2004 Second Prize:

late for work—
one empty space
petaled in wisteria

Linda Jeannette Ward

2004 Third Prize:

frozen eyes
of the just netted fish
winter rainbow

Marjorie Buettner

2004 Honorable Mentions (unranked):

the foul ball lands
in an empty seat
summer’s end

Tom Painting

 

rainy day . . .
a crow on the bare branch
sharpens his beak

Liz Fenn

 

hide and seek
among the hollyhocks
August moon

Marilyn Appl Walker

 

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