Porad Haiku Award
Winners of Haiku Northwest’s Porad Award appear here. The Washington Poets Association has occasionally sponsored haiku contests since the organization began in 1971, even publishing at least eight books of haiku from its contests in the late 1970s and early 80s. In 2004, at the suggestion of Michael Dylan Welch, the WPA started running a haiku contest annually, which Michael proposed naming after Francine Porad, the doyenne of haiku poetry in the Pacific Northwest, editor of Brussels Sprout haiku magazine, past president of the Haiku Society of America, and founder, in 1988, of Haiku Northwest. In 2008, Haiku Northwest started cosponsoring this contest, and continued as cosponsor until 2014, when it took over sole sponsorship. The following are links to all the contest winners and judges’ comments since the Porad Award for haiku began in 2004.
Submission guidelines for the 2022 contest (Deadline: September 20, 2022)
Early Washington Poets Association Haiku Contests
Past Winners and Judges
2004 Michael Dylan Welch
2005 Christopher Herold
2006 Ruth Yarrow
2007 William J. Higginson
2008 Margaret Chula
2009 Michael Dylan Welch
2010 Penny Harter
2011 Susan Constable
2012 Deborah P Kolodji
2013 Ce Rosenow
2014 John Stevenson
2015 Carolyn Hall
2016 Charles Trumbull
2017 Terry Ann Carter
2018 Francine Banwarth (with video)
2019 Tom Painting (with video)
2020 Julie Warther (with video)
2021 Susan Antolin (with video)
2022 Lenard D. Moore (with video)
Commentary on the 2005 winning poems will be added when it is located. The first ten of these links used to point to the website for the Washington Poets Association, which sponsored the contest from 2004 to 2013, but the organization no longer exists.
We produce a flyer featuring each year’s Porad Award winners, like this one for 2019.