Haiku Contest

The Haiku Contest

SHARPENING THE GREEN PENCIL

organized by the Romanian Kukai Group

The ROMANIAN KUKAI monthly contest has celebrated 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 way 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 been promoted.

The majority of the subscribers to our contest in Romanian have been participating to international contests in English and they gain many excelent results. We agree that the time has come to offer them a chance to confront the worldwide writers in a contest organized by us. So, the experience, which has been gained in these years, determined us to initiate a contest in English, language which is the mostly used by the haiku writers, currently.

SHARPENING THE GREEN PENCIL is a celebrating contest, but we hope and we wish that it will become a yearly event. A contest which - like other recognized contests - comes to stimulate the creativity of the authors and the quality of their poems, and to represent a way of mutual understanding and of enriching everyone’s experience.

The contest's name is inspired by one of the well known lyrics of Elena Manta Ciubotariu's haiku, awarded in 1995 at one of the international contests organized in USA: 

spring –

the child is sharpening

the green pencil