High-ku

The Prompt

In order to qualify as a haiku, your submission must meet the following requirements:

• There must be 3 lines.
• There must be 17 syllables.
• The first line should be 5 syllables, the second line should be 7 syllables, and the third line should be 5 syllables.
• It must be submitted to the Poets community.

For this challenge, we would like you to write a small poem about something tall and powerful: a mountain. We usually require at least 100 words for poetry submissions but we are breaking our rules this time in search of the best haiku. We hope you are as excited as we are to honor this traditional style of poetry from Japan.

The Prizes

• Grand Prize: $1,000
• Second Place: $250
• 10 Runners-Up: $25

For your poem to be eligible, it must be 3 lines a 17 syllables and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Stories published on Vocal and entered into the contest up until November 16, 2022, at 11:59 PM ET will be entered for consideration. Official Rules for the Challenge can be found here.

The High-ku Challenge is exclusive to Vocal+ members. To learn more and upgrade to Vocal+ visit https://vocal.media/vocal-plus.

To be eligible to win the grand prize, second place, or runners-up prizes, you must be over the age of 13 and residing in a country where Stripe is available at the time of entry. A complete list of countries where Stripe is available can be found here—winners will need to have a Stripe account created and connected in order to receive the prizes. For this reason, entrants located outside of any of these countries will not be eligible to win.