Porad Haiku Award

Winners of Haiku Northwest’s Porad Award appear here. The contest began under the auspices of the Washington Poets Association, which had sponsored occasional 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 after the WPA dissolved in 2013. The following are links to all the contest winners and judges’ comments since the Porad Award for haiku began in 2004.



Past Winners and Judges


Early Washington Poets Association Haiku Contests


Commentary on the 2005 winning poems will be added when it is located. The last ten of these annual 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.

20th anniversary retrospective video of all first-place Porad Award winners from 2004 to 2023.