Winner of the IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2011 is revealed

Founder and judge Dr. Drago Štambuk announces the winner of the Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2011

Jim Kacian of the USA has been announced as the winner of the inaugural IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award for the following submission:

late autumn sun
the field too small to hold
my shadow
Jim Kacian, USA

The award attracted haikus of a consistently high standard from poets representing a total of 29 countries. Founder and judge Dr. Drago Štambuk hand-selected the winner with great care, along with a number of commended runners-up. The winner was announced by Dr. Štambuk on Saturday May 28, 2011 at The First Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship.

The IAFOR Conference on Literature and Librarianship 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 set to be the proud annual host of the IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony.

Thanks goes to the many poets and other lovers of haiku who supported the award and haiku reading event, including Akito Arima, President of the Haiku International Association, Hana Fujimoto, the organisation’s Secretary, Shokan Kondo, President of the Japan Renku Association, and Ban’ya Natsuishi, President of the World Haiku Association, as well as Her Excellency Mira Martinec, Croatian Ambassador to Japan, and Hiroshi Ojima, Honorary Croatian Consul in Osaka.

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.