Welcome to Haiku Canada

THE BETTY DREVNIOK AWARD

Haiku Canada established this annual competition in memory of Betty Drevniok, past president of the society. With the exception of members of the executive of Haiku Canada, the contest is open to everyone, including regional coordinators of Haiku Canada.

New! THE BETTY DREVNIOK AWARDS

Next year’s Betty Drevniok Award opens Dec 15, 2025 and will close Feb 1st, 2026.
Pearl Pirie is in the fifth year as contest coordinator. She will coordinate the next competition, arrange for judge, collect and collate entries and design the trifold.
For 2027 we are looking for someone new to transition into contest coordinator. We’d like to send out to more worldwide haiku organizations and magazines to get wider access to haiku poets globally, especially Nigeria, Asia, and South America which have a lot of haiku poets.
Reach:
Poems this past year came from 30 countries, lead by Canada (75), and the USA (55) but followed closely by the UK and Croatia (14 each), India (12), Romania (11), and Australia (9).
We got submissions from New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, Malta, Montenegro, Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Turkey, Algeria, Iran, Belgium, Poland, France, Nepal, The Philippines, and Indonesia.
We had far fewer from Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central and South America and African countries than in previous years. We'll have to do more outreach.
Entry Amount and Shape:
We have had about the same amount entries for the last few years, between 700 and 800. This is in comparison to 2020 when had a total of 660 haiku from 229 poets from 38 countries.
This year we had submissions from 241 poets with 703 haiku entered.
Almost all entrants entered the maximum (and suggested) 3 haiku. 6% of poets entered 2 poems. Under 1% of poets entered only 1 haiku.
As far as form, almost all were three line poems with one four-liner and one poet giving titles to their haiku. There were 23 monostitch. (3% of entries).
Most haiku submitted were jiyuritsu (自由律 free form) haiku.
57 submitted poems were (often in sentence case) adjective-heavy, aphorisms or rhymed jokes in 5-7-5 syllabic form (about 8%, same as last year).
It's a demanding concise form and many entries were very strong.
Thanks:
Thanks to Mike Montreuil for printing and including the trifold in the Haiku Canada Review. Thanks to 2025 Judge: Charlotte Digregorio for accepting the volunteer position to judge.

THE BETTY DREVNIOK AWARDS RESULTS 2025

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2025 Haiku Canada Betty Drevniok Award.

First prize - Nika, Calgary, Canada
Second prize - Lev Hart, Calgary, Canada
Third prize - Carole MacRury, Point Robert, WA

• Results and Judge’s comments

Congratulations to all winners and thanks to all poets for their submissions
and their support of our contest.
Pearl Pirie
Contest Coordinator