MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Windows are opening in Hokkaido. Flowers and fresh green leaves are popping up between patches of snow, and "students are gazing out," writes Stuart Walker, professor of Education at Sapporo International University. SIU has held campus-wide haiku competitions for several years now; winning haiku are published in the Asahi Haikuist Network. This year the popular contest has been widened to include high school students.

Tom Painting advises high school students on how to write and publish haiku in a Writing for Self Discovery course at the School of the Arts in Rochester, New York. In "Paper Moon," a haiku anthology dedicated to "Buck-Teeth," his creative students Brittany Robinson and Devon Rogers wrote the following:

early spring
the Sunday paper
freckled with snow

windy day
a girl runs
to catch loose paper

English ability seems to be improving in Japanese high schools, so Walker similarly hopes to encourage creativity. He began teaching a haiku course this April. His haiku in the column today bids farewell to winter. So does the one by Yutaka Kitajima who dedicates his poem to "spring-never coming spring." The following haiku by Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) also indicates how people who live in cold areas feel when cherry blossoms finally arrive. She lived in the Kaga area, present-day Ishikawa Prefecture.

Docchi mukite miokuru hazu zo hanagumori

Which way to
bid farewell in clouds:
pink blossoms

About 450 of Walker's students along with at least as many high school students in the region have been encouraged to take part in this year's Hokkaido English Haiku Contest. The contest theme invites two haiku per student about nature and human behavior in northern Japan, so he expects many creative and unusual entries. Here's an example by Sachiko Hoshino who studies haiku at the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo:

Imitating
the songs of birds:
forest walk

Haiku will be judged and contest winners awarded prizes on June 25 during a special ceremony following a haiku colloquium at SIU, located at 4-1-4-1 Kiyota, Kiyota-ku, Sapporo. To enter the contest, send e-mail to: haiku2005@hellosiu.com.

Peter Duppenthaler also teaches haiku. The original version of the poem by Hiromi Yamada, his student at Tezukayama Gakuin University, didn't directly refer to the spring season. Her classmate Kumiko Miyawaki, however, didn't need to be so explicit in this next one about flowers appearing from under the snow. I wonder what kind they were? And so does Mickey Nasu; judging from the kind of book that he was reading when he wrote his haiku by a brook in Mitaka Ward, Tokyo.

Spring mountain
from under the snow
flowers appear

Strolling along the brook
wild flower guide in hand
lifelong learning

Want to try composing haiku ?

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