English Original
evening breeze
a flag releases
its stars
Janice Bostok International Haiku Award 2012
André Surridge
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
晚風
旗幟飄揚
釋出星辰
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
晚风
旗帜飘扬
释出星辰
Bio Sketch
André Surridge was an award-winning playwright and poet who immigrated to New Zealand from Yorkshire, England in 1972. He was President of the Playwrights Association of New Zealand from 1998-2000. Widely published, some of his awards included: 1995 Minolta Playwriting Award, 2007 Elizabeth Searle Lamb Award, 2008 Tanka Splendor Award, and 2010 Jane Reichhold International prize. And his first collection of haiku ans senryu, one hundred petals, was critically acclaimed in 2019.
L1, “evening breeze,” is classic haiku grounding—time, atmosphere, motion, all in two words, while Ls 2&3 use a haiku technique of connecting two distinct images: the physical movement of a flag and the cosmic presence of stars.
ReplyDeleteAnd the verb, "releases," is the emotional and technical anchor of the haiku. It avoids a "declarative" or "flat" description and instead suggests a moment of transformation.
There’s a quiet symbolic layer—identity, nationhood, maybe even loosening or dispersal—without spelling anything out.