Kikakuza
Haibun Contest
Kikakuza is a
group of haikai (linked-verse)
poets founded in 2005 in honour of Kikaku (1661~1707), Basho’s
celebrated disciple. We wish to help revive the tradition of
haibun, which gradually went out of favour after the Meiji
Restoration. For this purpose, we started a Haibun Contest
last year. In the English section, we received 90 entries from
17 different countries. Below are the guidelines for our
Haibun Contest this year. You are warmly invited to
participate. The contest will be judged by Nobuyuki Yuasa and
Stephen Henry Gill and the results will be announced in the
Kikakuza Bulletin and on its homepage, awards being sent
directly to the winners.
Conditions of
Entry
1 Subject: Free,
but discretion must be used to avoid slander and obscenity.
All works should be original and unpublished.
2 Style: No restrictions, but special attention must be paid
to honour the spirit of haikai.
3 Length: Not more than 30 lines, each line not more than 80
spaces long. Some leniency will be afforded by the judges, but
we cannot accept any work running beyond a single page.
4 Haiku: At least one haiku should be included. They need not
necessarily be phrased in three lines.
5 Title: A title must precede the main body of haibun.
6 Format: Print on a sheet of A4 size paper and write at the
bottom your name (and your pen name if you have any), together
with your address, telephone number, and email address (if you
have one). Your privacy will be strictly protected, and the
judges will not see your names or details. If you are
submitting more than one piece, each piece should be printed
on a separate sheet of paper.
7 Deadline: All
entries should reach the following address between 1 October
and 31 January 2010. Entries received after the
deadline will not be accepted.
Ms Motoko Yoshioka, Regalia 907, 7-32-44 Fujimicho, Tachikawa
City, Tokyo 190-0013, Japan
8 Entry Fee: All entrants residing in Japan are kindly
requested to pay 2000 yen into the following postal money
order account and send a receipt (or a copy of it) together
with your haibun. For this fee you may enter up to three
haibun.
Postal Money Order: 00250-4-95332 Kikaku no Kai
Entrants from outside Japan are kindly requested to send 1000
yen by international postal money order or use IRC coupons.
For this fee, you may submit up to three haibun entries. No
entry fee will be requested from those living in countries
where there is no international postal money order or coupons.
You should explain your difficulty, however, in your covering
letter. We cannot accept personal cheques because it is so
costly to process them.
9 Questions: All questions should be sent by post to the
address above or by email to the following address:
nyuasa88s@regalia.nir.jp
10 Sample haibun can be read at the following sites:
http://hailhaiku.wordpress.com/category/haibun/ (or
click ‘longer haibun’ from top page)
http://www.sosui.wordpress.com
(both in English and Japanese)
http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com
