The Best Haiku of 2025: Winners of the 2025 SCP Haiku Competition

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The Best Haiku of 2025

The Winner and Runners-Up of the Society of Classical Poets 2025 Haiku Competition

Judged by J. Thomas Rimer and Margaret Coats (see their remarks below)

See all entries here

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COMPETITION WINNER

Pine shadow stretches
A spine on the grassy field
Unobtrusively

—Rifka Kaplan-Peck

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HIGH DISTINCTION

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aloha print shorts
on a wave riding the moon
to a bamboo hut

—David McMurray

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Mist lifts from the sea
The pohutuwaka burns
On a salt-kissed shore

—Mike Johansson

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stillness in the pond
a dragonfly splits the light
without making sound

—Shofiqure Rahman

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RUNNERS-UP IN SEASONAL ORDER

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I, food for the worms
Worms become food for the birds
Birds, beauty and song

—David Drizner

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reincarnation . . .
the late gardener’s seed packets
ready for planting

—Ron C. Moss

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graduation day . . .
a baby grasshopper jumps
through the barbed wire fence

—Cezar Ciobica

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after the first rain
a boy buries his sandals
beneath the wet field

—Ryan McCartney

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bank holiday beach
barely room for flesh to tan
between the tattoos

—Andrew Shimield

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Yellow crab spider
on a beach of greenery—
mayflies the seagulls

—Daril B. Bentley

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Two chairs in the sun,
your hand brushing mine slowly,
ice melts in the glass

—Matias Basso

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little night music—
Mozart in the canopy
cricket on the leaf

—Zvonko Jurcevic

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field of lightning bugs
for an instant one perfect
moment of darkness

—Scott Mason

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My eighty-two years
Sailing still in calm waters
Breathe among the frogs

—Scharlie Meeuws

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indian paintbrush
spikes like crimson firecrackers—
seeds of prairie fire

—Sam Kauffman

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in sweltering heat
the sudden screech of sirens
stilled streets jolt alive

—Rita Pomade

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behind glass, seals dive
wide-eyed kid watches bubbles
red snow cone mustache

—Paul Engel

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A dead grasshopper
All around in withered grass
Its neighbors still sing

—Louis Groarke

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Lord, I’ll pursue you
as the swift wave does the shore,
breaking as I go

—Nuala Carr

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Desert sands at dusk
The hourglass empties again
Into starry sky

—Priscilla Pittington

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the warm summer sea
does not ask who I once was
it just lets me float

—Kseniia Klesova

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old age wanderlust—
a slug stretches its eyestalks
into summer sun

—Meera Rehm

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weary trees drop leaves
crispy from the heat of drought
aching for autumn

—Gigi Ryan

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Old and enduring,
white light shines on dusty road—
pilgrims and the moon

—Emily Meng

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red leaves and yellow
falling on the woodland path
slow me on my way

—Vera Kochanowsky

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one by one falling
the chestnut leaves making room
for the milky way

—Eduard Tara

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empty autumn beach
I write your name on the sand
waves forget for me

—Kindall Kirby

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Miniscule cell walls
I wish our prison had plants
I’d break every pot

—Rich N.

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Sleep slowly dances
On a frosty window sill
Inviting the night

—Simar Sodhi

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Footprints in the snow,
leading where I cannot go,
melt before I learn

—Grishma Ruiya

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dingy, splotchy white
winter tiger’s toothless fight
shadowboxing light

—Portly Bard

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Judges Comments

In the winning haiku by Rifka Kaplan-Peck, a “pine shadow stretches a spine” over a field. Indistinct images of trunk and branches resemble a human backbone and connected skeleton. The tree dominates the natural scene, for the shadow stretches “unobtrusively,” and passersby might pay no attention while stepping on it. A five-syllable word always challenges a haiku writer to use it effectively, and here Kaplan-Peck surpasses the challenge, for “unobtrusively” serves to characterize the poem. No word describes the tree directly—only its shadow. The rhyming word “spine” in the haiku’s middle line helps reinforce the tree’s identity. The necessary seasonal reference is unobtrusive, too, for a pine is often a “friend of winter.” Only grass in the field and the apparent length of the shadow speak rather of summer. All in all, this poem is a model of highly-prized haiku understatement. The five-syllable word “unobtrusively” fits its context, but indicates as well the overarching perspective of the poem.

“Aloha print shorts” starts off the superb surfing haiku by David McMurray. The shorts represent a summer picture, because intrepid surfers may take to the waves at any season of the year, if garbed in warm and safe wetsuits. The middle and last lines describe the ideal ride every surfer dreams about: high as imagination will carry him, coasting down without a fall or injury on a long, long slope to a beachside home. No better way to reach the height than by riding the moon! The destination, “a bamboo hut,” recalls the humble residence of at least one Japanese haiku master. And when the wave takes the surfer there, the ride is perfect because he need not pick up the surfboard and walk. This is an exciting topic the early Japanese masters didn’t address. Nevertheless, it makes splendid use of the haiku form’s potential energy.

Another expert way of dealing with a five-syllable word appears in Mike Johansson’s haiku. He places the pohutuwaka, or brilliant red New Zealand Christmas tree, precisely in the center of the poem. From November to January (summer in the Southern Hemisphere), its flamboyant flowers attract all eyes as it appears to burn off the mist from a shore that’s doubly warm because it’s “salt-kissed” by surrounding seas. The haiku is blazing tribute to a beautiful scene created through a beloved national symbol.

The dragonfly haiku by Shofiqure Rahman presents another striking example of color, without mentioning a color name. The middle line says the dragonfly “splits the light” with its wings of gauzy material that function like a glass prism shaping a rainbow. Dragonflies may look green or blue or orange or purple or any color of the visible spectrum, depending on the temperature, the season, the individual insect, and the angle of viewing. The display contrasts with motionless stillness of pond water in the first line—and with the lack of sound in the air of the final line. This well-framed haiku depicts a creature with variations comparable to those of the poetic form itself.

It’s worth saying a little more of light and color. When Emily Meng’s almost mystic haiku speaks of “white light,” the reader should know that traditional pilgrim attire in China and Japan is white. Sam Kauffman’s painterly haiku depicts a uniquely American scene, telling of the Indian paintbrush plant and its orange-red flowers with red or yellow upper leaves. The broad brushstrokes span the prairies. Scott Mason mentions an extremely unusual “moment of darkness” in a field of lightning bugs. Anyone familiar with fireflies is aware that an individual insect’s “dark time” is longer than its “bright time.” Yet for a field with a large population on a summer evening, the probability of all coinciding in darkness at once is so slim as to be startling!

Suitable motion (like that of Basho’s frog jumping into the pond) is the great merit of some poems here. Vera Kochanowsky uses the word “slow” to pause her haiku’s final line. It lets her intensify a lingering focus on the picturesque quality of colored leaves seen on the ground. For Nuala Carr, “breaking” portrays a wave as part of its nature, and still more so, perhaps, describes the human speaker in pursuit of God.

In an amusing way, motion explains the effect in Paul Engel’s haiku. The wide-eyed kid watching an aquarium show sees bubbles when the seals dive. Without thinking, he himself makes bubbles into his red snow cone—and that action produces the red mustache on his face. Ryan McCartney, observing a boy in a field after an early rain, notices his sandals sink into the mud. Naturally, the boy will prefer to go barefoot for the summer and let the sandals stay buried in the field.

Special technique distinguishes some poems. David Drizner creates the only “chained verse” haiku the judges remember. Chained verses, or lines in which each last word must be the first in the next line, would seem to better fit a poem of more lines. There are a number of good “chained verse” sonnets, but Drizner’s haiku creates an equally pleasing effect, opening out into a surprisingly uplifting conclusion. Miniaturization, or shrinking a scene to a tiny scope, is a classic technique suited to haiku and occasionally used by Japanese masters. Daril B. Bentley offers a perfect example in his beach leafscape populated by a crab spider and some mayflies.

One runner-up haiku doesn’t meet requirements of the traditional form, yet acknowledges them. Rich N. proves he knows haiku technique in another entry with a nature scene and season reference. His prison haiku, however, lacks anything of nature except the prisoner’s wish for plants, absent from the sterile space that spurs him to a destructive outburst in the final line. Natural and powerful enough!

Good simple haiku may merely set a scene and leave interpretation of any kind up to the viewer or reader. Kseniia Klesova does this so well that her haiku is open to opposing interpretations. It can be read as a pleasant and carefree dip in the summer sea, or a death song for a body afloat in the ocean.

Matias Basso devotes all three of his love haiku to simple description—of which the judges present a single favorite above. Yet following this method, Basso nonetheless achieves nuance of character and narrative in each, and in the three poems together.

Haiku make an admirable impression when words effectively represent not just a season, but a certain point (beginning, middle, or end) within it. Many Japanese kigo (seasonal references) are understood to specify such moments. In the above group of poems, two deserve great credit. The first is by Gigi Ryan, describing weary trees with crispy leaves at the end of a drought-plagued summer. Ryan’s poem does not name summer at all, but locates her haiku with the expression “aching for autumn.”

Portly Bard creates an extraordinary end for winter, line by line. The haiku begins with utterly unattractive snow. It proceeds to portray a decrepit winter tiger, vainly “shadowboxing” the increasing light that warns of spring’s rapid approach. And the three lines rhyme perfectly.

The judges have not commented on each of the runners-up, for none need our help, and the remaining splendors transcend our efforts. We honor all listed above as the best of more than 1,200 haiku submitted by 510 writers in the 2025 Society of Classical Poets Haiku Competition. Haiku in English, following traditional standards, represent a significant part of formal poetry’s ongoing impressive achievement. This brief form, with a longstanding tradition outside Western literature, has proved itself accessible and sensitive in many languages. In English, it offers an unparalleled opportunity for creative excellence to a worldwide array of writers.

Many thanks to every one who participated!

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