Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2015

Vladimir DevidĂŠ Haiku Award 2015

VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ HAIKU AWARD 2015

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IAFOR PUBLICATIONS Executive Editor: Dr. Joseph Haldane Published by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan IAFOR Publications, Sakae 1-16-26 – 201, Naka Ward, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan 460-0008 ISBN: 978-4-907131-03-6 Designed by Thaddeus Pope Printed in Japan, 2015

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VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ HAIKU AWARD 2015 The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award was founded by Dr. Drago Štambuk, at the time Croatian Ambassador to Japan, and Dr. Joseph Haldane, President of IAFOR, and named in tribute to Vladimir Devidé’s vision and passion for haiku.

The award is based on literary merit, regardless of whether written in the traditional or modern style.

As such, it aims to transcend haiku divisions in the unifying spirit of Vladimir Devidé. The Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award is proudly organised by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) as part of The Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship (LibrAsia).

Dr. A. Robert Lee, internationally recognized critic, author and poet, and LibrAsia2015 Keynote Speaker, announced the winners of the 5th Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award during the Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship 2015 in Osaka, Japan.

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FOREWORD The Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award is now in its fifth year, and I am very proud to see that this year’s event grew to four hundred submissions from fifty-four countries, attesting to the international popularity of this award, as well as the enduring appeal of haiku.

A Japanese organization in origin, the International Academic Forum now hosts more than forty events every year over three continents, and is a keen supporter and promoter of the Arts, with international competitions in film, photography and literature.

Haiku is a quintessentially Japanese form of poetry, and has become one of the country’s greatest gifts to the world as it has been adopted and adapted internationally, so now there are many thousands of poets writing in myriad countries and languages.

One such country is Croatia, where haiku has a large following, and happens to be the country of both Vladimir Devidé, in whose honour the award 7

is named, and Drago Štambuk, the founding judge of the competition, as well as Boris Nazansky, this year’s Grand Prize Winner.

Nazansky’s poem is a wonderful example of the haunting, suggestive, and minimalist beauty of haiku, and attests to the extremely high standard of entries to this award as it continues to grow in reach and prestige.

I am sure that you will be impressed by the diversity and range of poems selected this year

by Dr. Štambuk, which take the reader on an emotional roller coaster through their sparse verse. Hold on for the ride!

Dr. Joseph Haldane Nagoya, April 2015

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IAFOR would like to thank His Excellency Dr. Drago Ĺ tambuk, founding judge of the Vladimir DevidĂŠ Haiku Award and critic and poet Dr. A. Robert Lee, LibrAsia2015 Keynote Speaker, who announced the winning entries.

We would also like to thank the Haiku International Association for their continued support of the event, particularly its President, Dr. Akito Arima, as well as Hana Fujimoto and Emiko Miyashita, both members of the Haiku International Association Board of Councillors and Featured Haiku Workshop Presenters at LibrAsia2015.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 二 Vladimir Devidé

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三 Drago Štambuk

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四 Grand Prize

31

五 Runner Up

35

六 Commended

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七 Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2016

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VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ Despite a successful international academic career as a renowned mathematician, with professorships in Australia and the US, as well as his native Croatia at the University of Zagreb, it is primarily as a Japanologist and haiku poet that Vladimir Devidé is now remembered. Devidé was not only one of the world’s most celebrated haiku poets, but a tireless promoter of Japanese culture. If Croatia is now considered a Haiku “superpower”, with more poets practicing the art per capita than any other nation, it is largely thanks to his efforts. A full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Vladimir Devidé has won a number of awards and honours, including the Le Prix CIDALC (1977), the Prize of the City of Zagreb (1982), and for his work as a promoter of Japanese culture, the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure (1983).

Vladimir Devidé died in August 2010.

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DR. DRAGO ŠTAMBUK His Excellency Dr. Drago Štambuk is the Croatian Ambassador to Brazil, a post he took up in early 2011, after five years as Ambassador to Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Dr. Štambuk is a widely published and acclaimed poet, and is now recognized as one of Croatia’s most distinguished men of letters. His writing career began in 1973 and has grown to include more than 40 collections of poetry in Croatian, English, French and Spanish, and his work has been included in all relevant anthologies of Croatian contemporary poetry. The ambassador has received numerous literary awards in his native country and abroad, and was the first recipient of Dragutin Tadijanovic Award established in 2008 by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is also a founder and director of the All-Croatian Poetry Festival on the Island of Brač, founded in 1991.

As well as his writing, Dr. Štambuk has had two separate careers as both a medical doctor and 23

a diplomat. A graduate of Zagreb University’s Medical School (1974), he went on to specialize in internal medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology at the Clinical Medical Center in Zagreb, before moving to London in 1983 to continue his medical career at both the Royal Free Hospital and St Stephen’s.

Following the independence of Croatia in 1991, he became a diplomat, and has served as the Croatian ambassador to various countries, including India and Egypt, and from 2005 was named as Croatia’s representative in Tokyo. His brief was expanded to include the Republic of Korea in 2006.

The ambassador was a Fellow at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002. He was appointed to the IAFOR International Advisory Board in 2010 as the conference chair for the first Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship 2011, and instituted the Vladimir Devidé Haiku award as a tribute to Devidé, who had died earlier in 2010, serving as the judge since 2011.

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VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ HAIKU AWARD SELECTED HAIKU 2015

Grand Prize

pregnancy shape of the dark side of the crescent moon

Boris Nazansky, Croatia

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Runner Up

spring sky a seagull enters our selfie

Rosa Clement, Brazil

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Runner Up

evening lull a seaside cave exhaling butterflies

Anthony Kudryavitsky, Ireland

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Runner Up

first glimpse of her mastectomy bra winter rose

Chen-ou Liu, Canada

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Runner Up

silence‌ leaves are falling all by themselves

Dubravko Korbus, Croatia

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Runner Up

the snow-spinning wind I dream of only big trees in my prison yard

Alan Summers, UK

43

Runner Up

after the sunset a white chrysanthemum lights quite alone

Vasile Moldovan, Romania

45

Runner Up

summer night‌ a worm bites through the silence in a fallen acorn

Milan Dragović, Serbia

47

Runner Up

the shadow of the fish hides in the shadow of a leaf

Jim Kacian, USA

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Runner Up

shining in a drop of dew all His love

Nikola Ä?uretić, Croatia

51

Commended

rustling pages – in the library the echo of the past forests

Eduard Tara, Romania

55

Commended

spring breeze how the broken willow still yearns

Timothy Russell, USA

57

Commended

news of war the red welt of a tick bite slowly spreads

Vanessa Proctor, Australia

59

Commended

a shirt hung on the birch tree branch – a man in its shadow

Dušan Mijajlović Adski, Serbia

61

Commended

old temple reflected on its floor red maple leaves

Yukiko Yamada, Japan

63

Commended

how his breath catches when I undress – double mastectomy

Susan Burch, USA

65

Commended

the homeless man tides up his new residence approaching storm

Emmanuel Kalusian, Nigeria

67

Commended

roadside poppies the prostitute is knitting a crown

Detelina Tiholova, Bulgaria

69

Commended

All Souls’ Day. In an empty grave bugs’ home.

Sergio Francisco Pichorim, Brazil

71

Commended

atrophied right hand poetry loves frailty so write with what’s left

Fareed Ben-Youssef, USA

73

Commended

evening visitor – a leaf steps inside on a gummed shoe

Darrell Lindsey, USA

75

Commended

picture on the wall man’s eyes look at me unblinking

Ĺ tefanija Ludvig, Croatia

77

Commended

between there and here the essence of a snowflake

Julie Warther, USA

79

Commended

so many shooting stars – and yet the sky remains in its place

Iulian Ciupitu, Romania

81

Commended

old beachcomber one eye on the horizon

Scott Mason, USA

83

Commended

Uranium doses.

How can a flower endure all that radiation?

Raad Kareem Abd-Aun, Iraq

85

Commended

Out of the freezer into the earth – my dead cat.

Daniel Gahnertz, Italy

87

Commended

elderly nun absently picks a flower …he loves me not

Jeanne Jorgensen, Canada

89

Commended

The most difficult of all that I experienced: silence of God.

Svetomir Ä?urbabić, Serbia

91

Commended

aerospace museum the ascending moon looks in lunar rover’s hall

Vitali Khomin, Ukraine

93

Commended

summer’s end the taste of lettuce gone to seed

Seren Fargo, USA

95

Commended

braid the smell of her hair lingers on my palms

Margolak Jacek, Poland

97

Commended

shifting tides she now sings her mother’s lullaby

Christine L. Villa, USA

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VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ HAIKU AWARD 2016 The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) will begin accepting submissions for the 6th Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award on June 1st, 2015. If you would like to enter the award, please visit iafor.org/haiku for rules and entry procedures.

The Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award was created to celebrate classical and modern haiku, both those poems that follow the traditional form and those that play with it. Though traditionally Japanese, haiku has become a global art form. In keeping with IAFOR’s international scope, we welcome haiku submissions from around the world.

Further information on the award, including previous winning submissions, can be found by scanning the following QR code with a mobile phone, or by visiting iafor.org/haiku.

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Cover Image Hydrangea and Swallow, from the series Large Flowers, c. 1833-1834.

Artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

www.iafor.org

Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2015 The Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award was founded as a tribute to Vladimir Devidé’s vision and passion for haiku. The Award is based on literary merit, regardless of whether written in the traditional or modern style, and is proudly organised

by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) as part of The Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship (LibrAsia).

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