Date: October 1, 2016
Contact: Bill Palladino, [email protected] (231)590-1685
Harvest Haiku Challenge Launched in Northern Michigan
Traverse City – Taste the Local Difference®, Michigan’s local food, branding and marketing organization, has launched the Harvest Haiku Challenge in partnership with Blackbird Arts TC and Michigan Writers. The poetry contest opened for entries on October 1 with a deadline of November 15, 2016.
Haiku are a form of Japanese poetry. Each haiku is spare in design, expressing a single emotion or impression in seventeen syllables of unrhymed words on three lines with five, seven, and five syllables on each line, respectively. The short poems are often related to the natural world. The emphasis for this contest will be on celebrating the many facets of Northern Michigan’s harvest season.
Taste the Local Difference® (TLD) is partnering with two non-profit organizations to present the Harvest Haiku Challenge. Michigan Writers (michwriters.org,) a cooperative effort by and for Michigan writers, will provide judging of three main age categories of submissions; grades K-6, grades 7-12 and adult. Prizes will be awarded in each category and in a series of subcategories created by Michigan Writers. Winning entries will be showcased at Blackbird Arts’ gallery in Traverse City and will be published in a hand-set letterpress chapbook designed and printed by Blackbird Arts (blackbirdartstc.org,) and their print arts workshop.
Winning entries will also be published in TLD’s 2017 Guide to Local Food magazine, now in its fourteenth year of publication, with a circulation of 80,000 across Michigan.
Entry forms for the Harvest Haiku Challenge are available in coffee shops, stores, breweries and other places where people gather, or by contacting TLD. Entries can also be submitted online at http://LocalDifference.org/haiku. Teachers in all grade levels are especially encouraged to use the Harvest Haiku Challenge in classrooms.
The deadline for all submissions is November 15, 2016. Judging will be managed by Michigan Writers with awardees announced in February 2017. The printing and gallery opening for winning entries at Blackbird Arts will occur in the spring of 2017, with the magazine feature in TLD’s Guide to Local Food in Northern Michigan scheduled for May of 2017.
For more, information, please contact Bill Palladino at (231) 590-1685 or [email protected]
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