Best of the Haiku Challenge (February 2026)

Because they appear in coldest, darkest months of the year, winter stars have a remote, austere beauty that makes us contemplate the big themes of literature—like love and loss, birth and death, and a longing for the eternal. Not surprisingly, last month’s winning and honorable mention haiku all concerned the passage of time.

Congratulations to all! To read additional poems of merit from recent months, visit our Tricycle Haiku Challenge group on Facebook.

You can submit a haiku for the current challenge here.

Winter Season Word: Winter Star

WINNER:

in Appalachia
or in the Hokkaido sky
the same winter star

— Gregory Tullock 

The English writer and translator R.H. Blyth once described haiku as “an open door that looks shut.” Not wide open. But not locked either. Left unlatched and slightly ajar, it requires only a little push for the door to swing open, allowing the reader to step inside.

In the best haiku, the hinge of that “door” is neither rusty nor well-oiled. It should be easy to open, but not too easy. Imaginative play is a part of the process, but it shouldn’t happen all at once. A good haiku has layers of surplus meaning that reveal themselves with subsequent readings of the poem.

Our February 2026 winning haiku offers a good example. Consisting of two place names and a star, the images are so bare that at first we may not know what to make of them. The open door looks shut.

Appalachia refers to a mountain range spanning the eastern United States from Georgia to Maine, while Hokkaido is the northernmost landmass of the eight islands that make up Japan. The terrain of that island is mountainous, and so it is probably the rugged, remote topography of the two regions that the poet wishes us to imagine.

That “the same winter star” is visible from both regions would appear to suggest a pan-humanist point of view. We may belong to different countries and cultures, but at bottom we are all the same. The star is the symbol of our shared humanity. But something interesting happens when we consider which star the poet might be referring to.

Given how few heavenly bodies can be recognized on sight by modern people, the most likely candidates are Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) or Polaris (the North Star), both of which are visible in the northern hemisphere all winter long. But the difference is profound.

Sirius, which is part of the constellation Canis Major, is only visible in winter, while Polaris remains fixed in place throughout the year—for which reason its symbolism is remarkably consistent across cultures. It stands for steadfastness, guidance, and the hope of reaching a goal or a final destination.

If the “winter star” in question refers to Sirius, the poem is tied to the season of cold and darkness. Its tone is therefore somewhat somber. If it is Polaris, the star is a symbol, not just for our collective human experience, but for the journey of our species through deep time.

For the non-Japanese reader, it may take a while before curiosity sets in and we begin to wonder about the history of Hokkaido—the last of the eight islands to be settled by the people from mainland Asia who displaced the indigenous Jōmon population of Japan.

According to Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Jōmon population of the eight islands was only around 75,000 when these migrations began in the first millennium B.C.E. With millions of people arriving from Korea and China, their genetic and cultural identities were quickly overwhelmed. Hokkaido remained as a holdout until the 18th century, when the indigenous Ainu people were colonized and forcibly assimilated into mainstream Japanese society. Their language is believed to be extinct today, with no known native speakers.

It requires little imagination to connect the deep history of the two places mentioned in the poem. Until recently, both were populated by native peoples who had lived there since the upper Paleolithic. The star—Sirius or Polaris—remains above both regions as a silent witness in the winter sky. But everything else has changed. I read this simple, remarkably restrained haiku as a poem about unspeakable loss, what it means to be human, and the unfathomable mysteries of deep time.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

winter starlight born
many far-off kalpas past
reaches me just now

— Stephen Billias

None of us survive
the winter stars still shining
long after they’re gone

— Mat Osmond

Winter season word: “Winter Star”

one learns to explode
inwardly and silently
like a winter star

I felt overwhelmed after reading the news, so I stepped outside to look at the sky. The winter stars had figured it out. They could explode without flying apart.  — Clark Strand

Submit as many haiku as you please on the season word “winter star.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment of time happening now.

Be straightforward in your description and try to limit your subject matter. Haiku are nearly always better when they don’t have too many ideas or images. So make your focus the season word* and try to stay close to that.

*REMEMBER: To qualify for the challenge, your haiku must be written in 5-7-5 syllables and include the words “winter star.”

Haiku Tip: Write with Feeling!

How much emotion is allowable in a haiku? The short answer is “as much as you can get away with.” The trick is knowing who it is for.

Strictly speaking, a haiku no longer belongs to the poet once it has been sent out into the world. This is true of all poetry to some extent. But it is more true of haiku. A haiku lives in the thoughts and feelings that unfold from the bare little squiggle of a poem. What the poet provides is 17 syllables only. What the reader experiences is a world.

That being the case, the poet’s job is to write with feeling while not getting in the way of those feelings . . . to suggest a world while not getting in the way of that world. Therefore, most of what the poet puts into a haiku will be suggested, not stated.

So how do we write with feeling? Over the centuries, poets have offered advice on writing from the heart. Bashō believed it was important to leave room for the reader to intuit the heart of the poem. Shiki said the emotional content should be expressed through objective images. And Issa confessed everything, telling the truth about his life no matter what. But everyone agrees on one thing: a haiku isn’t a haiku without some emotional truth at the heart of it. This is what poets always strive for, even if they get there in different ways.

A note on winter stars: Season word editor Becka Chester writes about this month’s theme: “In winter months, in the northern hemisphere, our view is past the periphery of the Milky Way, with far fewer stellar bodies between earth and extragalactic space. The air is drier at night in winter, so there is less haze in the atmosphere. The stars are bright and intensely clear. 

“In Haiku World, William J. Higginson writes of winter stars, ‘The clarity and chill of winter skies bring the stars closer.’ During this season, deciduous trees are bare of foliage, so we have a less impaired glimpse of the sky. And because the nights are longer, we have ample opportunities to gaze up at the stars.”