Announcing the Frog Blog Haiku Contest

by Stephanie Black

‘Tis summer, season of sun, sand, sunscreen and snits (my children’s, when I tell them we have to clean up the house today too). Summer, the season when hearts turn to poetry.

Well, maybe not. But we can change that. Warm up that keyboard and get ready to write.

Remember haiku? You learned haiku form in high school. It was that unit lodged between dangling participles and iambic pentameter. Five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. Ah yes, it’s all coming back to you.

Welcome to our Frog Blog Haiku Contest. It's time to put your haiku abilities to use. But we aren’t seeking graceful poems about nature and seasons. We want haiku about LDS fiction. Hey, what did you expect?

Your haiku must have something to do with any LDS novel, series of novels, or a character from an LDS novel. For example, you could take the main character from Jeff Savage’s House of Secrets and write:

Shandra Covington
Pigs out and never gains weight
I want to kill her

Or suppose you’re a big Robison Wells fan (his mother). You could write:

I read Counterfeit
I spewed Sprite out of my nose
It was worth the pain

The Rules:

*The haiku must follow the 5-7-5 syllable format.

*The topic of the haiku must have something to do with an LDS novel or character from a novel. Or it can be about several novels--for instance, you could write a haiku about why you enjoy the style of a particular author.

*The haiku can be funny, serious, dumb or startlingly brilliant. But it cannot be rude, crude or insulting or it will be disqualified.

*You can enter as many times as you want.

*The contest ends next Wednesday morning, July 26th, at 8:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time. All qualifying entries will then be entered into a drawing and a winner selected. Okay, I guess that, strictly speaking, it's not a contest, since the winner will be chosen randomly. But all the entries are sure to be marvelous, so how could we ever choose one?

The Prize:

The winner will receive his or her choice of an autographed copy of a novel written by one of our froggie bloggers. Latest releases are:

Julie Coulter Bellon, Time Will Tell
Stephanie Black, The Believer
Kerry Blair, Mummy’s the Word
Jeffrey S. Savage, House of Secrets
Robison Wells, The Counterfeit
Sariah S. Wilson, Secrets in Zarahemla. A note here--Sariah’s book will be released in Feb. 2007. So if the winner chooses Sariah’s book, Sariah will send him/her a little sneak preview plus an IOU for the book when it’s released.

Hey, that inspires me. I feel another haiku coming on:

Fans chew fingernails
Waiting for Sariah’s book
Nephite intrigue rocks

Let the festivities commence! Get in touch with your inner poet and get writing. Fame and maybe even a free book await you in the Frog Blog Haiku Fest!