Centennial High School HAIKU CUT2007

Haiku Cut Champions • Haiga Cut Champions • Photos 1 • Photos 2

Dr. Randy Brooks, Millikin University
Cynthia Helms, Centennial High School

Centennial High School
Champaign, Illinois
April 2007

Following a Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund grant to learn about Japan, Ms. Cynthia Helms, Director of the Library, invited Dr. Brooks to Centennial High School to conduct workshops on the art of reading and writing haiku with Mr. Stan Yanchus' creative writing students and interested students from across the school. Following the writing and editing workshops, there was a matching contest with the student haiku. We called the contest "HAIKU CUT" with teams competing for haiku book prizes.

Centennial High School
Champaign, Illinois
April 2007

HAIGA CUT: A Matching Contest

HAIGA CUT Favorites

Ms. Helms also invited Dr. Brooks to conduct workshops on the art haiga—which combines painting or photographs with haiku in Ms. Stacy Gross' advanced photography class. Following the haiga reading and editing workshops, there was a matching contest with the student haiga.

Download a copy of the HAIGA CUT competition powerpoint ppt file (3.2mb).

words unspoken
scaring him
more than anything he ever said

Sunday morning
in the park
all i remember is you

Centennial High School
Champaign, Illinois
April 2007

Haiku Cut Honorable Mentions

The following haiku made it into the final round of consideration for the matching contest, but they didn't make the final HAIKU CUT. These are good haiku that didn't work as matches in the kukai competitions.

Haiku Cut! Funded by the Centennial High School Library,
Tepper Electric Arts Endowment, and
Champaign Public Library

If you are interested in learning more about contemporary English-language haiku, you might want to purchase HAIKU: THE ART OF THE SHORT POEM by Tazuo Yamaguchi. This DVD/book publictaion is a documentary film about contemporary haiku poets and concludes with a haiku head-to-head kukai in traditional poetry slam competition at Haiku North America 2007. This would be an excellent addition to middle school, secondary school or college libraries.

It is also an excellent personal anthology of haiku by leading contemporary haiku poets, with video interviews of the poets which gives you a sense of meeting active members of the haiku poetry community. See more details about HAIKU: THE ART OF THE SHORT POEM go to:

http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/haikufilm/index.html