The Haiku Society of America is rich with traditions. One of these traditions, worth celebrating with Frogpond’s fortieth anniversary in 2017, is the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, which has sought to recognize the best contribution to each issue of Frogpond, as selected by the HSA executive committee. The award began in 1981 by honoring the following poem by Tadashi Kondō from Frogpond 4:1:
hoping the shape
of the navel will be good
father cuts the cord
Since then, selections have included mostly individual haiku, but also tanka, haiku sequences, and renku or other linked verse. Each award has included a cash prize of $100. Total prize money has now exceeded $12,000, with funding provided by the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo—a place well worth a visit if you ever have the chance. The Haiku Society of America and its members are grateful for this ongoing support.
Some Museum of Haiku Literature Award selections have remained memorable, others less so. Either way, they reflect the changing tastes and perspectives of HSA leadership, and may serve, as the following selections indicate, as a microcosm of English-language haiku development over the last several decades. The award continues to encourage the submission of each person’s best poems for publication in Frogpond. Long may this tradition continue.
1981
hot rock by the stream
each of the baby’s toeprints
evaporating
This poem is 5-7-5, though completely natural. Frogpond had by this time largely moved on from the predominance of 5-7-5 syllables found in early English-language haiku journals (the first such journal was American Haiku, which started in 1963, and Frogpond started in 1978).
1982
the old garden fence
now keeps the goldenrod
from the goldenrod