The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2014 winner announcement

Dr. Lars Vargö, Swedish Ambassador to Japan announces the winner of the fourth IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award

The winner of the fourth IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award has been named as Anthony Kudryavitsky of Ireland for the following submission:

Fathers’ Day –
children measure old oaks
by the length of their arms
Anthony Kudryavitsky, Ireland

The award attracted nearly 300 haikus of a consistently high standard from poets representing a total of 39 countries, proving that the international appeal of haiku is strong and growing. Most submissions arrived from Croatia and the USA, but India, UK, Romania, Serbia, Canada and New Zealand were also heavily represented. Founder and judge Dr. Drago Štambuk hand-selected the winner with great care, along with a number of runners-up. The winner was announced by Dr. Lars Vargö, Swedish Ambassador to Japan on Friday, April 4, 2014 at The Fourth Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship (LibrAsia2014).

LibrAsia is an international and interdisciplinary conference which brings together academics and practitioners from across the world to discuss new directions of research and discovery in literature and librarianship. It is the proud annual host of the IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony. As well as the award ceremony, the conference played host to Emiko Miyashita and Hana Fujimoto of the Haiku International Association who gave a creative haiku writing workshop.

Thanks goes to Dr. Lars Vargö, Swedish Ambassador to Japan, who announced the winning entry. Great thanks also goes to the Haiku International Association for their continued support of the event, and its President, Dr. Akito Arima, as well as the Secretary General, Mrs. Hana Fujimoto. Mrs. Fujimoto and Mrs. Emiko Miyashita, Member of the Haiku International Association Board of Councillors, and Director of the JAL Foundation.

ABOUT THE AWARD

The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award was formed when Dr. Drago Štambuk suggested that The International Academic Forum consider launching a haiku award in memory of Vladimir Devidé.

It didn’t take much convincing. IAFOR is dedicated to the promotion of international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research, dialogue, and understanding, and Vladimir Devidé would have identified strongly with this mission, for in many ways it was also his own. He was a mathematician, a Japanologist, a translator, and a poet, who through haiku accessed another culture and built bridges between Croatia and Japan, and within Japan. After his death, those bridges continue to develop between exponents of classical and modern haiku, as the award recognises excellence regardless of whether submitted haiku are in the traditional or more modern style.