The Tricycle Haiku Contest

In every issue, the quarterly Buddhist magazine Tricycle publishes a winning haiku from its ongoing monthly haiku contest. The poem appears alongside a column written by the contest’s judge, poet and author Clark Strand. This season’s haiku-adjacent column includes the following bit, about one theory on the nature of haiku:

The Japanese haiku critic Kenkichi Yamamoto (1907–1988) believed that the best haiku strike a balance between humor and existential isolation. “Loneliness in life and the comical elements of life are two sides of the same coin,” he wrote. As a genre of literature, haiku thrives on the flip of that coin — the small element of uncertainty that challenges our ordinary understanding of the world.

I hadn’t realized there were such things as haiku critics (!). I also like the idea of loneliness and humor being related somehow.

Read the Spring 2024 winning haiku here. And enter the monthly contest here. (The next round must include the word “turnip.”)

• Clark Strand
• haiku
• language
• poetry
• Tricycle