Triveni Awards 2024 Results!!

Introductory Comments from the Judges:  Susan Antolin and Kala Ramesh

  Huge thanks to the coordinators, Sangita Kalarickal and Teji Sethi, for all of their help behind the scenes, and to every poet who sent in their haiku to the contest. I am especially grateful for the opportunity and honour to co-judge the contest with one of the poets I most admire, not only for the high quality of her own poems and her sound judgement in evaluating others’ work, but also for the way she approaches every task, with sincerity, enthusiasm, and kindness.

It was no surprise to read through the six hundred entries and find so many well-crafted and moving haiku. While we, as judges, do not know where the poets who entered the contest reside, I imagine that likely a majority of the poems are by poets in India. Over the past two decades, India has become a globally recognized force in English-language haiku, with poets from India appearing regularly in all of the top journals and contests. True to the spirit of haiku, these poems do not imitate a Japanese sensibility but rather elevate genuine observations and authentic, imaginative ways of perceiving the everyday world each poet inhabits.

Among the winners are poems capturing quintessentially Indian themes. With the benefit of technology, those of us who need to look up new vocabulary for a flower or a goddess can easily do so and thereby share in the richness of these haiku. 

— Susan Antolin

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Thanks to Susan Antolin for agreeing to co-judge the first Triveni Awards 2024 along with me. I stepped into it with great trepidation, for I’m a fan of her works and Acorn, and realised as the co-judge I had to match up to her skills. I thank her for the kind words about me and my abilities. I’m deeply touched and even more motivated now.

We received 600 poems from 300+ poets from 37 countries. Countries and the number of participants:

India – 119, USA – 61, UK – 22, Romania – 13, Croatia – 12, New Zealand – 10, Australia – 9, Canada – 8, Italy – 8. Poland – 5, Philippines – 4, Ireland – 3, France – 2, Germany – 2, Nepal – 2, Singapore – 2, Sri Lanka – 2, Switzerland – 2, The Netherlands – 2, Algeria – 1, Belgium – 1, Bosnia and Herzegovina – 1, Bulgaria – 1, Hungary – 1, Indonesia – 1, Iran – 1, Japan – 1, Lithuania – 1, Mongolia – 1, Nigeria – 1, Portugal – 1, Serbia – 1, South Africa – 1, Spain – 1, Trinidad – 1, Turkey – 1, Ukraine – 1.

Triveni Haikai India is extremely pleased with this overwhelming response and the high quality of poems received.

Cash prizes: First Place with a prize money of Rs 10,000

Second Place with a prize money of Rs 5000  

Certificate for all the award winners: First 2 places and 8 Honourable Mentions, most exquisitely designed by our in-house art editor: Teji Sethi. — Kala Ramesh 

The Backstory: Sangita Kalarickal and Teji Sethi gathered all the 600 entries, sent it to the judges after anonymizing the entries. Once the judges selected the winners, they put the names back and finalised the order. Teji Sethi designed the certificates and they were all ready for the Triveni Utsav 2024 in Celebration of Triveni Haikai India's THIRD ANNIVERSARY on 1st December 2024.

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First Place: Triveni Awards 2024

refugee train                

small hands starfished                

against the glass 

— Debbie Strange                         

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The verb “starfished” is brilliant in this poem. It feels essential that the verb is in the passive rather than active form. The word “starfished” accurately describes the shape of children’s hands spread wide against a window and also evokes the sense that both starfish and refugee children are at the mercy of forces larger than themselves. The refugee children are themselves like starfish, carried by the ocean and deposited on the shore. Here they are on a train, looking out at the world they have been thrown into. The reader cannot but hope these small hands will be carried to safety.

— Susan Antolin

We went through the first, second and third selection lists and in each list, this poem scored full marks.  In our final Zoom meeting, this poem surfaced to the first position. I echo Susan’s sentiments, which she has voiced extremely well.

— Kala Ramesh 

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Second Place Tie: Triveni Awards 2024

                too small                 for her laugh                

sister’s urn

               — paul m. 

     Inlet Beach, Florida, USA

A laugh is one of the many things apart from the human body that is an essential part of a person and cannot be contained in an urn. Where in the physical world does the sister’s laughter reside once her body has been reduced to ash inside the urn? A genuine moment of loss and wonder.

— Susan Antolin

The poet has shown us the middle of the story, leaving the reader to fill in the rest of the narrative arc, in just seven words. The images and words are extremely well chosen.

— Kala Ramesh

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Second Place Tie: Triveni Awards 2024

sacred grove even the rain tiptoes on leaves

— Sonali Rasal 

   Pune, Maharashtra, India

This poet breaks with haiku convention by personifying the rain, and in so doing has created a delightful poem with an image that is both playful and accurately descriptive. The verb “tiptoes” evokes the image of a light rain hitting the foliage in the grove gently, even reverently. It is as if the rain knows to show respect to the sacred grove itself.

— Susan Antolin

Sacred Grove is what captivated me. I had recently visited a desert resort, and we walked through a sacred grove. It was a beautiful, never-to-be-forgotten experience. The host spoke to us about how the sacred groves are forest fragments in varying sizes, which are communally protected, and which usually have a residing deity, the guardian of that area. What impressed me most was that hunting and logging are strictly prohibited within these areas. The tribals knew how to respect and nurture Mother Earth, which we, the city dwellers have lost dismally. With this in mind, view Ls 2 & 3. A deep thought expressed beautifully in simple language.

— Kala Ramesh

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Honourable Mentions – Triveni Awards 2024 In alphabetical order by first names.

autumn leaves a palette for loss

— Alfred Booth

    Lyon, France

This one-line haiku offers multiple readings. When autumn departs, it leaves behind a palette without vibrant colour. The leaves have fallen, leaving the world in the hues of winter, the colours one might associate with loss. Or, in an alternate reading, do the autumn leaves (now a noun rather than a verb) offer a palette (more vibrant with bright reds, oranges, and yellows) for loss? The reader can interpret the poem to suit their sensibility and to match their individual experience of loss.

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sunrise my cat checks if I am alive

— Christina Sng

    Singapore 

This haiku charmed us immediately. We can imagine a cat checking on its person in the morning, perhaps staring down at their face or placing a paw gently on their shoulder. Is the cat simply asking for breakfast or checking to see if their person has survived another night? The gentle humour in this is delightful.

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rehearsal for my cremation MRI scan

— Jenny Shepherd 

   London, UK

This haiku is darkly funny. Of all the thoughts that might go through one’s head while holding absolutely still for an MRI scan, that it is a rehearsal for cremation is surprising and yet completely understandable. The sort of person who has such thoughts would be an interesting (and entertaining!) person to know.

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yoga mat the imprint of my foot dissolves

— Owen Bullock 

    Canberra, ACT, Australia

We enjoyed the implied parallel between the release of stress in the body achieved through yoga and the dissolving of the footprint on the yoga mat. A playful noticing of a detail in an everyday moment.

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war games played as a child everyone goes home

— Rehn Kovacic 

  Mesa, Arizona, USA

It is a universal truth that children imitate the adult world in their play.    Unfortunately, war is all too often the situation children internalize and imitate. This haiku implicitly reminds us of the stark reality that while everyone goes home after a children’s game of war, that is not the case in actual war.

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landslide — digging out bodies

to bury them

— Sreenath 

   Mysuru, Karnataka, India

The irony presented in this spare haiku carries the weight of a devastating truth, that rescuers have dug out bodies after a landslide only to bury them again. Surely this situation has occurred as often as there have been deadly landslides. This haiku is well-crafted with an economy of words. Its spareness accentuates the gravity of what the poem conveys.                                 

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winter nights the child sleeps in white noise of fists and whimpers

— Swagata Soumyanarayan 

     Mumbai, India

The sound qualities in this haiku are appealing. The repeated “w” and “n” sounds in “winter nights” and “white noise” create a sense of cohesion. Breaking with tradition, the moment captured in this haiku is not one moment at all but a series of repeated moments, as the implied situation of domestic violence has become such a constant in this child’s life that it is perceived as white noise. A heartbreaking haiku.

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crescent moon mahakali's sickle dripping red

— Yesha Shah

     Surat, India 

A crescent moon, likened to a sickle dripping red, is an evocative image. Add to that the richness of a Hindu goddess who uses her tongue as a weapon, and this haiku grows exponentially in meaning and delight. Mahakali has innumerable followers and mass appeal in India. She is worshipped in every village and city. She wields ten arms, each symbolically fortified with a weapon to protect her people.

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A PPT of the Triveni Awards designed by Sangita Kalarickal and Teji Sethi was presented at the Virtual Triveni Utsav 2024.

A PPT presentation of the Triveni Awards was presented by Sangita Kalarickal and Teji Sethi at the Triveni Utsav 2024 on 1st of December.

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The Judges' profile:

Susan Antolin fell in love with modern Japanese poetry while living in Japan in the late 1980s. She has authored two books (Artichoke Season and The Years That Went Missing), edits the journal Acorn (acornhaiku.com), is an active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, and can also be found at susanantolinpoet.com. She is a co-editor together with Garry Gay and Carolyn Hall of The San Francisco Haiku Anthology: Volume Two (2024). She lives in Walnut Creek, CA with her family and is currently working toward an MFA in poetry at NYU.

Kala Ramesh is the Founder and Director of Triveni Haikai India and the Founder and Managing Editor of haikuKATHA Journal. A seasoned poet and educator, she is the visionary behind the Triveni Gurukulam Mentorship Program and has authored numerous acclaimed works, including The Forest I Know (HarperCollins, 2021). Kala has taught haikai at Symbiosis International University, organized multiple haiku conferences, and conducted workshops for nearly two decades, making significant contributions to the haiku community in India and globally.

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