Haiga Challenge 1, Anju Kishore – Results

Anju’s poem . . .

pancake moon
stories the beggar feeds
her toddler

Deepest gratitude to Richard Grahn and The Abstractaphy Initiative for choosing my senryu to flag off the Haiga Challenge. I am also grateful to all who submitted their thought-provoking entries. It was a delight working on them along with Richard, a poet and artist I greatly admire.

Having had the barest minimum experience with haiga, I have based my selections on what touched me and what appealed to my sensibilities.

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Results:

First Anju’s picks and then an editor’s choice pick per Anju’s suggestion.

Reid Hepworth – Sidney, British Columbia, Canada

Anju’s Comments: Reid’s haiga makes me think of drooping eyelids, heavy with sleep. Or hunger. Or fatigue. Or all of the above. Whose eyes are they? The mother’s, the child’s or both? Or is this a view of the moon from those eyelids, with the mother’s voice blurring the line between reality and imagination? This minimalist abstract effortlessly sets the wheels in my head turning.

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Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta – Hyderabad, India

Anju’s Comments: To me, Sankara’s haiga feels like a song, perfectly balancing light and dark, object, text, and space. The moon is not there, but is there in the bowl. The beggar is not there, but is there in the stick. Want is in the darkness, and hope is in the light. There is a dream softly taking wing. And we see the mother and the child.

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Marilyn Ashbaugh – USA

Richard’s Comments: This haiga spoke to me in that the discarded eggshell not only conjures the image of a half-moon, but it also speaks to the uncertainty of day-to-day existence for those living in poverty. Eggs go good with pancakes but like the story of the beggar, this one is hollow and lacking in sustenance. The lines between the real and the unreal are blurred by the story. The child goes hungry, but Mother feeds its imagination.