I’m running a contest on Twitter right now. The prize is a $20 gift card from online bike retailer Jenson USA.
To enter: Tweet a 5-7-5 haiku about bicycling. You *must* use the hashtag #baiku and you must get my attention by appending your tweet with @cyclelicious. The Deadline is at noon US Pacific Time (about two hours after I post this). I’ll judge among entries and select a winner. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON. If you submit a haiku then come up with what you think is a better one later, delete the earlier tweet.
What I’ll look for:
- 5-7-5 syllables in the language your haiku is written in. In other words, five syllables on the first line, seven on the second, five on the third.
- Ideally, each line can stand somewhat on its own, with the full haiku encompassing a theme. There’s flexibility here, but clumsily splitting a sentence at a 5-7-5 boundary just to meet a technical requirement of haiku is lame.
- Ideally, some kind of season, nature, or weather thought traditionally is a part of haiku; but don’t force it just because you think I might like it better.
- English is my primary language, but I can muddle through a little Japanese, French and Spanish as well. You’re taking a risk combining languages, but it may win you some creativity points, and I’m a sucker for multilanguage puns. Maybe a lolcat bike haiku?
Good luck! I always see excellent bike haikus, and I anticipate I’ll probably pick three or four I like best and then pick randomly from that. I’ll also collect the best and post them for the world to see.
So excited about this. I used to do lots of haiku. For that matter, I used to write a lot of poetry. I’ve been on a dry spell for about a decade. After hearing my fellow poet/best friend/punk rock mystery author (yeah, she’s like the only one) Hyacinthe broke out of her writers block, I got inspired to do something about it. I bought a Moleskine and a nice Copic brush pen to force me to write. I have been trying to make myself write one poem every day. The bike path through the wetlands is always a source of inspiration, but in the downpour, couldn’t come up with anything today (it sort of chased everything away). So thanks for the opportunity. Next time, though, please provide an option for people who don’t do Twitter!