The Romanian Kukai monthly contest will have been celebrating 5 years of online activity on April 1st, 2012. The contest is addressed to those who can write in Romanian only. It has been and still is an excellent means to promote haiku for those who can speak Romanian. Furthermore, the haiku online contest has become a genuine school where a new generation of authors have promoted it.

The experience which has been gained in these years determine us to initiate a contest in English, language which the mostly used by the haiku writers presently. The majority of the subscribers to our contest in Romanian have been participating to the international contests in English rendering appreciating results. We agree that the time has come to offer them a chance to confront the world wide writer in a contest organized by us. It is a celebrating contest but we hope and wish it will become a yearly event. A contest which, as most recognized contests, comes to stimulate the creativity of the authors and the quality of their poems, to represent a means of mutual understanding and to enriching everyone’s experience.

The contest's name is inspired by one of the well known lyrics of Elena Manta Ciubotariu's haiku : spring - / the child is sharpening / the green pencil, awarded in 1995 at one of the international contests organized in USA.


Contest rules


1. The contest is open to the public, regardless of age or nationality. Members of the executive committee are not eligible.


2. The contest is free of charge.


3. There is preference for the unpublished poems in media, volumes or on the internet.


4. The participants are required to send two haikus in English. They are asked to send the native variant of the poems also.

5. There is no theme imposed.


6. The poems will be sent only by e-mail at [email protected]. At the subject box it is mandatory to write haiku contest 2012. The actual message must contain the poems which should be accompanied by the participant’s credentials: (name, surname, postal zip code, e-mail address).


7. The deadline is 15th of March 2012.


8. The secretary of the contest will copy and transmit the list of poems to the members of the jury by e-mail, without mentioning the contestants’ names or personal data.


9. The jury will appreciate the originality and the complexity of the poems in accordance with the spirit of the classic haiku.

10. The jury will award three prizes and, also, a number of commendations which will be decided depending on the quality of the poems. Each rewarded author will receive by mail a diploma and a copy of the printed anthology of the contest.


11. The awards will be made public on April 1st, 2012 on the official Romanian Kukai site.


12. The received poems will be published in an anthology dedicated to the contest which will be available to the public on the official Romanian Kukai site.


13. The authors who send poems for the contest agree that their poems should be published in the contest’s anthology under no pretense of financial demands. The authorship can be claimed following the publication of the poets in the anthology.


14. The jury will be formed by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu, the founder of the online haiku movement from Romania, Dan Doman and Cezar Florin Ciobîcă.