Haikuplet Chains

My lover's warm lips,

Sunshine breaks through heavy clouds,

Piercing winter's grasp.

*

Her lips, once tasted,

Melt the cold and frozen snow,

From my deadened soul.

*

Hello, everyone! I'm back with another - and hopefully interesting - challenge for you all. The last one was a real success, and I hope to get even more participation with this one.

As you've undoubtedly read from the title, this challenge involves creating Haikuplet chains. What I really like about this concept is that it encourages writers to read, engage, and create together. Hopefully, one of the outcomes of this challenge will be that you will have found someone(s) on this platform who enjoys reading your work and maybe find others you enjoy reading from as well.

What is a Haikuplet chain? Well, let's start with the Haikuplet. A Haikuplet is a set of two Haiku that together tell a beautiful story or describe an idea or concept. The one I wrote above is an example of a Haikuplet. A Haikuplet chain is when a subsequent writer makes subtle changes to the original Haiku while staying true to the original story or concept. If you need a clearer picture, you can check out this article, which describes it in great detail: Haikuplet Chains.

Here is the challenge: Create a Haikuplet of your own or add to/make a Haikuplet chain. The choice is yours. You may submit up to three entries, and I will give $20 to each first-place winner of two separate categories: Best Original Haikuplet and Best Haikuplet Link. You have until August 15, 2024. I will try to post the winner before August 31, 2024.

The Rules:

• The Haikuplet must contain two Haiku that together convey a single story, idea, or concept.

• The Haiku in your Haikuplet must be traditional: three lines, seventeen syllables, the first and third line having five syllables and the middle line having seven.

• For the purpose of this challenge, each Haikuplet link in the chain must copy the first Haiku in the original Haikuplet and change the second Haiku while still conveying a single story or concept.

• Each contestant will have up to three entries so that you can create your own Haikuplet and/or build on someone else’s to make a chain.

• If submitting your own original Haikuplet, each contestant must comment a link to that Haikuplet in the comment section below. If you’ve already commented, thank you, but please start a new comment thread with your original entry.

• Each link in the Haikuplet chain must reply directly to the link in the comment above it. This means that if Suze publishes an original Haikuplet and Poppy wants to make it a chain, she must reply to Suze’s comment with the link to hers. Matthew would then reply to Poppy if he wanted to add a third link to the chain.

• To encourage more entries, each Haikuplet chain can be no longer than five links, and you cannot start a new chain from an existing one.

The Rubrik:

I will judge the original Haikuplet based on a ten-point scale for each of the following categories:

• The Haikuplet completes a story, idea, or concept
• The Haikuplet invokes one or more emotions
• The Haikuplet's theme encourages the creation of links to form a Haikuplet chain.

I will judge the Haikuplet links based on a ten-point scale for each of the following categories:

• The Haikuplet link includes the first Haiku in the original Haikuplet and stays true to the original author's intent for the story, idea, or concept.
• The Haikuplet link adds depth to the original Haikuplet.

On a final note, I have no idea how many submissions I'll get here, but I believe that typically, more poems are submitted to a single vocal challenge than longer-form stories. In the spirit of that, I will ask if a few of you will DM me in Discord to volunteer to help me judge in the event that I am overwhelmed with submissions. If there are high-scoring submissions, I may publish a follow-up to vote for the winners. As always, thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or suggestions, let me know in the comment section below!