Dear friends,
Wow, wow, wow, is all we can say! Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2026 Solitary Daisy Haiku Contest! This was the most difficult year yet to pick out the winners and between us, Sally and I spent hours reading and sorting. Then together we debated out the final results. Please, please, please remember that just because your haiku wasn’t chosen in this round doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. We encourage you to submit those haiku to other publications and keep on writing!
First Place
patching
the winter-worn earth
first primroses
Ben Oliver
Stroud, England
Second Place
courtyard weeds—
a stray cat’s tail
rubs the Buddha’s nose
Edward Cody Huddleston
Baxley, Georgia (USA)
Third Place
our ancestors
singing their sorrow
—ghost pipes
Goran Gatalica
Zagreb, Croatia
Honourable Mentions
fiddleheads
I sit for a spell
unfurling
Mo Schoenfeld
United Kingdom
lone magpie feather
the length
of letting go
Vishal Prabhu
India
spotted owl . . .
gliding in and out
of identity
Nicholas Klacsanzky
Seattle, Washington, USA
Member News
Cafe Haiku selected two of Sally Quon’s photo haiga for Naturescapes.
Big congratulations to Marjolein Rotsteeg, who won a Touchstone Award for Individual Poems! We are so excited for you!
Don’t forget to share your news with us so we can celebrate with you!
Just For Fun
Petals Waka Journal annual ebook is open for submissions until April 30th. Before submitting, please read this article on Waka from the Japan Times, #6 talks about Waka composed in languages other than Japanese such as English). https://sustainable.japantimes.com/magazine/vol27/27-02
Cornflower Haiku Magazine is open for submissions until April 30th. This is a new journal out of the Netherlands that plans to publish quarterly.
Sense and Sensibility will be open from May 1st to May 10th on the theme of “Hot for Summer”! Please do not enter before May 1st.
The Haiku Society of America Rengay Award opens on April 1st until May 31st. You can find last year’s winners here. Rengay was invented as a form by Garry Gay in 1992. You can find out how to write rengay in Daisy friend Michael Dylan Welch’s excellent website.
The 2026 confluence Poetry Prize invites your submission of one Japanese short form poem on the theme of death and dying. They will award $500 in total prize money for the best poems on this theme that expand our capacity for imagining and illuminating this human existence. Submissions are due by May 1, 2026.
The Japan Fair is holding a free online workshop on May 14th at 6 pm called Haiku Targets. This is a highly recommended workshop for all levels of haiku poets and is lead by Daisy friend, Michael Dylan Welch. This workshop leads up to their International Haiku Contest which closes on May 24th. Winners will be announced at the Japan Fair in Bellevue, WA, USA on June 27th and 28th.
Natalie Goldberg will be hosting a Haiku Saturday workshop on May 23rd at 2 pm EDT. Registration is open here.
The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational is an international online contest that attracts submissions from all over the world. Submissions on the theme of cherry blossoms close on June 1st.
The Haiku Shack Anthology is a new series curated and edited by Cendrine Marrouat and Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky. Each volume will contain a maximum of 50 haiku selected from contributors living around the world. Submissions for the upcoming issue must be in by September 30th.
Hexapod Haiku Challenge is now open! In addition to the usual age-related award categories, they will offer a special topic award this year for the best haiku featuring arthropod recyclers. Deadline for submissions is June 15th.
Don’t forget to occasionally pop into Haiku Poet Interviews to read more about the lives of some of your favourite haikuists! This month’s interview is with Sam Renda from Australia.
This Week’s Prompt
Send us a haiku or two about sea creatures!
Deadline to submit is May 3rd
Send one or two haiku to sally_quon@yahoo.com or to Michele at kelownalady@hotmail.com. Find our full submission info here. Don’t forget to tell us where you are writing from!
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.— Matsuo Bashō
Michele Rule is a disabled writer from Kelowna BC. She is especially interested in the topics of chronic illness, relationships and nature. Michele is published in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist, Pine Cone Review, the Enchanted Garden, Five Minute Lit, Shadow Pond, WordCityLit, and the anthologies F*ck the Patriarchy, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and To Live Here, among others. She is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets and Haiku Canada. Michele has been awarded honourable mention twice for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational and also for the Haiku Northwest Porad Award. Her first chapbook is Around the World in Fifteen Haiku. Michele lives in a beautiful garden surrounded by people who love her just the way she is.
Sally Quon is a disabled poet and photographer living in the Okanagan Valley of beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She is an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets and a member of Haiku Canada. Her work has been published in numerous journals including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, First Frost, and Time Haiku. She is currently working on her first book of haiku, haibun, and haiga, tentatively titled, “My Valley, My Home.”
Featherstone Creative
