Washington Poets Association adds haiku contest

Cash prizes totaling $200 will be paid for first, second and third place haiku. Deadline is March 1, 2004. The entry fee is $5 plus $1 poem. Fine print and 2004 entry form can be downloaded at www.washingtonpoets.org.

Our 2004 judge will be Michael Dylan Welch. He has been writing haiku since 1976. Originally from England, he now lives in the Seattle area. He's editor and publisher of Press Here haiku books and of "Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem." He co-founded the Haiku North America haiku conference, and in 1996 he co-founded the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, Calif.

The contest was named to honor painter and haiku writer Francine Porad. She's the former President of the Haiku Society of America and editor for eight years of BRUSSELS SPROUT, an international journal of haiku and art. There are nineteen collections of her published haiku, with haiku in current issues of publications in the U.S., Canada, England, Croatia, Australia, Romania and Japan. She lives in Washington state.

For more information or to have an entry form mailed to you, send a SASE to John Burgess, 9716 Fremont Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103 or send an e-mail to WPAeditor@comcast.net.