The Heron's Nest

The Tenth Annual Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards - 2022

Judge’s Comments – Scott Mason

One of my luckiest breaks in haiku occurred when Peggy Lyles was assigned to be my first editor at The Heron’s Nest some twenty years ago. Along with anyone else who knew Peggy, I can gratefully attest to her keen judgment, vital encouragement and extraordinary personal grace. Peggy’s example set the standard I tried to live up to in my own eventual role as an associate editor at the journal. To this day, her masterful last collection, To Hear the Rain, is one of only a handful of haiku volumes on my nightstand. So I feel especially honored to have served as the judge for this tenth annual haiku competition in Peggy’s memory.

Any one of a couple dozen haiku could have occupied one of these top eight spots. After making my final selections I happened to reread the superb Author’s Preface to Peggy’s collection. The four sentences of its second paragraph just seemed to leap out. As you will see below, they supply the opening line or two (in italics) of the commentary for this year’s first three awarded poems. Thanks, Peggy ... yet again!

First Place

Like the great epics, haiku always begin “in the middle of things.” Unlike other literature, they stop in the space of a human breath, forming vibrant crystals ready to reactivate the tones of a moment’s experience.

We’re instantly jolted awake by the strident tone of a bell: not from a bedside alarm clock but the distinctive, insistent chime from a youngster’s trike. I imagine the sound coming from behind me as I stroll along some sidewalk or narrow path near home. While this bell emphatically signals a specific moment, it also heralds, a mere three words on, an entire season, a season filled with freedom and possibility ... and, just maybe, the lifetime beyond it. Quite an accomplishment in a single human breath—and such a brief one at that!

However, the real muscle (the heart muscle) of this haiku comes from the one word at its very center. How vibrantly “headlong” thrusts the tricycle and its young operator not only through space but through time. Even more so, and more remarkably, it catapults this poem beyond time and space to an overarching attitude—one of youthful enthusiasm, determination, even devil-may-care recklessness. For this reader at least, such unbridled exuberance comes as a tonic after two so circumscribed years.

This modest poem boldly declares: BRRRING it on!!!

Second Place

If tingles of heightened awareness inform the poet and the moment, they are likely to excite similar responses in a receptive reader, so that the haiku expands and resonates.

We experience an awakening of a very different nature in this haiku. The scene’s action takes place, I surmise, half a world away: on the Indian subcontinent or perhaps elsewhere in East Asia. Once again sound acts as the catalyst. In this instance, the tinkling of metal anklets in a ritualistic dance first heightens the poet’s and our awareness and then expands that awareness to the level of cosmic consciousness—a unified state where lines can be reversed at will or dissolve altogether (as that between our senses in “the sound of starlight”).

Up to and including the wonderfully synesthetic third line we’re treated to some fine sound play in this poem—from its opening assonance (dancers/anklets) to its pervasive sibilance—so that the haiku not only expands but resonates. A bravura performance!

Third Place

A good haiku offers just enough words, just the right words, to recreate the essence of a specific time and place and hold it permanently available.

Edenic tranquility is the emotional essence of the scene and moment presented here. What feels most precious about this state is the intimation of its perishability. The sun will move on. The maples’ shade will depart with their leaves. The maples themselves and the moss will die, as all things must that live. (The trunks and limbs of fast-growing silver maples are spindly and hence especially vulnerable.) But this momentary idyll comes equipped with “a sit-awhile bench”—the best words for the best seat in the house. It’s the house of the “eternal now,” a place this inviting haiku holds permanently available for all to enter and enjoy.

Honorable Mention (unranked)

A poignant still life (so to speak); I read this well-worn Bible as the testament to a well-lived life.

The surprising yet apt last word of this marvelously breezy monoku delivers on the promise of its first, rejoicing in a life lived on its own terms: wild and free.

Every season and life has its rough patches (often of our own making) and smooth spots—but what better time than the equinox to recognize both! A clever and euphonic gem.

Alternately amusing and appalling, this pithy poem speaks volumes. It’s a “topical” piece that, alas, may never date.

At the end of the day (or year), life’s simple pleasures just may sustain us. This fine poem activates and delights all our senses.

Editor: This year’s contest received 2,767 poems, from 634 poets.

2022 Readers' Choice Awards

One-hundred-fifteen readers of The Heron's Nest have provided us with their selections of the best poems we published during 2022. We published 491 poems in Volume 24. Of these, 392 received at least one reader nomination. Ten points were awarded for a first-place nomination, nine for second, and so on.

Here are the top poems and poets as identified for these Readers' Choice Awards:

Grand Prize Poem

Haiku of the Year (25 nominations, totaling 178 points)

First Runner-up

(13 nominations, totaling 81 points)

Second Runner-up

(12 nominations, totaling 73 points)

Third Runner-up

(11 nominations, totaling 71 points)

Other Highly Rated Poems:

• 70 points: "now flying" — Tom Clausen — September
• 65 points: "Dinnertime" — Frank Hooven — September
• 61 points: "autumn peach" — Mary Stevens —March
• 60 points: "my home town" — Bill Kenney —March
• 58 points: "country drive" — Bryan Richert —December
• 58 points: "hospice book cart" — Kelly Sargent — December
• 56 points: "when they were babies…" — Lisa Gerlits —December
• 54 points: "a boy swings…" — Jacquie Pearce — September
• 51 points: "on my own..." — Francine Banwarth — September
• 51 points: "dad’s toolshed—" — P. H. Fischer — March
• 50 points: "taking the shape…" — Mary Stevens — September
• 48 points: "too young" — Mark Teaford — September
• 47 points: "longest night" — Roberta Beary —March
• 47 points: "a drawer full" — Bryan Rickert —June
• 47 points: "the grace      of deer" — Michele Root-Bernstein —December

Popular Poets

This category represents the total number of points awarded to each poet for the poet’s entire body of work in Volume 24.

Grand Prize — Poet of the Year

Peter Newton: (38 nominations, naming 7 of 7 poems published in Volume 24 = 278 points)

First Runner-up

Mary Stevens: (24 nominations, naming 6 of 6 poems published = 157 points)

Second Runner-up

Bill Kenney: (22 nominations, naming 3 of 3 poems published = 135 points)

Third Runner-up

Roberta Beary: (20 nominations, naming 4 of 5 poems published = 112 points)

Other Popular Poets

• Bryan Rickert (3 of 3 poems, totaling 108 points)
• Francine Banwarth (5 of 6 poems, totaling 101 points)
• Jacquie Pearce (3 of 4 poems, totaling 98 points)
• Michele Root-Bernstein (6 of 8 poems, totaling 96 points)
• Barrie Levine (2 of 3 poems, totaling 84 points)
• Yu Chang (3 of 3 poems, totaling 82 points)
• Annette Makino (4 of 4 poems, totaling 82 points)
• Paul Chambers (3 of 6 poems, totaling 79 points)
• Mimi Ahern (2 of 2 poems, totaling 76 points)
• P. H. Fischer (3 of 3 poems, totaling 75 points)
• Joshua St.Claire (4 of 4 poems, totaling 75 points)
• Peter Yovu (1 of 1 poem, totaling 71 points)
• Tom Clausen (1 of 1 poem, totaling 70 points)
• Sandra Simpson (2 of 3 poems, totaling 70 points)
• Mark Teaford (2 of 2 poems, totaling 67 points)

We congratulate the poets honored in this year's Readers' Choice Awards and offer our sincere and deepest gratitude to the readers who devoted their time, effort, and discernment to the nomination process. Whatever value these awards may have comes directly from this community of readers.