Submissions to LHAGuidelines for Inclusion of Haiku in the Living Haiku Anthology

The Invitation

The Living Haiku Anthology team welcomes contributions of previously published haiku for inclusion in its ever-expanding online repository of international haiku. It is expected that each poet offering their work for inclusion submit a minimum of five (5) haiku to give readers some sense of the poet's style, range and content. Each poet's contributions will be placed in a portfolio bearing the poet's name and to which portfolio the poet may contribute more haiku over the years.

While there is no upper restriction on the number of previously published haiku that may be included in a poet's portfolio, poets are reminded that LHA will remain a global haiku resource for years to come, so submissions should be carefully planned to reveal how your works may best represent your haiku journey for posterity.

What Contributions will be Accepted?

  • Haiku previously published in an edited haiku journal, book or anthology (print or on-line/digital);
  • Winning place-getters of haiku contests judged by haiku poets;
  • Winning place-getters of peer-voted kukai contests. 

All haiku contributions must cite the venue and date of first publication.

Citations should be formatted as shown in the following examples to ensure acceptance of haiku:

Self-published haiku submissions will be given to an LHA editor for study and possible acceptance. Acceptance is not automatic: submissions are evaluated with regard to genre distinction.

Previously unpublished haiku may be accepted for inclusion in the the Living Haiku Anthology where the editor deems that such acceptance is warranted by the quality of the haiku and with due regard to the poet's existing body of published work.

Presentation

Every reasonable effort will be made to format haiku accepted into LHA according to the poet's intent. Please note that, if you use punctuation to mark 'cutting', LHA requests that haiku adhere to the following standards for the sake of appearance and consistency within the anthology.

An ellipsis is a set of three periods ( . . . ). Each period should have a single space on either side, except when adjacent to a quotation mark, in which case there should be no space.

The en dash (–) is slightly longer than the hyphen (-) but shorter than the em dash (—). The typical PC keyboard lacks a dedicated key for the en dash, though most word processors provide a means for its insertion. How to insert an en dash into your text.  The en dash should have a space on each side.

Biographical Background

LHA requests that contributors supply the year and country of their birth, also where they live at present accompanied by a 200px (width) photograph, URL of their blog/website (if any), email address and a brief biographical statement. (50 words max.)

Contributors will be added to LHA's MailChimp mailing list on their submissions being received. 

Licensing

The Living Haiku Anthology has become the largest international haiku archive worldwide, housing thousands of published and cited haiku from more than 40 countries, and growing.

As an international archive containing your intellectual property, we are very conscious of the minefield of international copyright laws particularly as they pertain to haiku. “Fair use” as interpreted in the U.S. may not apply in the same manner in Nigeria or Serbia for instance and its appropriateness in application to something as minimal as a haiku is questionable and untested in the courts (as yet).

Our team at the Living Haiku Anthology has been discussing and are now planning to implement a clear, expansive, and culturally beneficial policy for protecting author rights. As well, we would like to implement a policy granting limited permission for the non-commercial reuse of authors’ works contained within the site – this will primarily aid haiku scholars, researchers, students, teachers, and critics, allowing them to quote works in their own texts. Secondarily, we will have in place an author copyright license which is designed for worldwide use and not subject to the vagaries of regional copyright laws.

When a work's copyright term ends, the work passes into the public domain, although the duration for which copyright applies varies from country to country due to the number of years that copyright continues to apply after the author’s death.

For these reasons, we are planning to implement a Creative Commons 4.0 international licensing model (details below) for content archived within the Living Haiku Anthology, and invite you to examine the main points of this license to see what it allows and does not allow, in terms of reuse permission.

Among the reasons for reaching this decision is the fact that we do not wish to become directly involved in handling permission requests from scholars or teachers. To contact the author in confidence, assuming that the author’s contact details have not changed, or trying to track down executors in the event of an author’s death, and then relaying back each permission is a time-consuming and complex process. We simply do not have the staff (all volunteer) or time to handle these requests. And our experience is, to date, that 100% of such requests for reuse are answered in the affirmative.

Another reason concerns quoting haiku in an educational context. We would like to encourage teachers to expose students to haiku, and these days many institutions (universities) have policies in place disallowing teachers from distributing any text to students in a class, without permission. This situation has come about in part because of for-profit textbook corporations suing teachers, students and universities (points made in the book Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig, 2004). Therefore, without permission, teachers are now forced to compel students to purchase what are too often very expensive and not very creative corporate textbooks. Needless to say, there are no contemporary haiku to be found in them. The Creative Commons license gives permission to teachers to reuse your work in non-commercial environments, including the classroom. We feel strongly that this is good for our haiku community, and good for the next generation—that is, a social good. We hope you agree.

For a good overview of Creative Commons licensing, we recommend this five-minute video from New Zealand: Creative Commons & Copyright Info

The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license is the most restrictive of the Creative Commons licenses. All of your haiku works (and prose materials, if housed here and subject to your agreement with this licensing model) will follow these terms, for anyone wishing to share or “reuse” your works:

Under a CC4.0 CC BY-NC-ND License:
Anyone who is not the author of the work to be reused, is free to share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format -- *only* so long as the following restrictions are adhered to (the author cannot revoke these freedoms):

  • Attribution — The user must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. This may done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or the use made.

  • NonCommercial — The user may not use the material for commercial purposes.

  • NoDerivatives — If the user remixes, transforms, or builds upon the original material, the user may not distribute the modified material.

For you (the author) anyone using your work in any way does so under the following license terms:

  • Attribution — The user must include your full name, the source of their quotation, and cite the publication information for each and any haiku you have provided us (the Living Haiku Anthology).

  • NonCommercial — no one can use your haiku in a “primarily for-profit” haiku or poetry anthology, unless they contact you and obtain your permission first. No one can use your haiku for advertising or branding.
    A teacher can use your haiku, with proper credit given to you (including citation of the source of publication), in an educational sourcebook or textbook, only if that book is not “primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation.” This means that a large textbook company such as Longman, Pearson, Oxford, etc., cannot reuse your haiku in their textbook (these textbook companies create books primarily for profit). On the other hand, a small press, non-profit press, or educational press, whose primary purpose is educational not “for commercial advantage or monetary compensation,” will be allowed permission to reuse your work, with proper citation.
    For more detailed information on the definition of “non-commercial” please visit these pages:
    https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Defining_Noncommercial and 
    http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/defining-noncommercial/Defining_Noncommercial_fullreport.pdf

  • NoDerivatives — Your haiku works cannot be altered, or added to, or in any way changed, when they are quoted.

As a collection of haiku by poets, both living and deceased, from so many nations, the Living Haiku Anthology has a preference for Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licensing and would ideally like to place the entire site under such a license. We feel it provides a good balance of author protection, and cultural freedom, allowing your works to be studied in school, discussed by scholars and critics and in general provide for the continued visibility of haiku as a worldwide art.

Making a submission

Haiku contributions to the Living Haiku Anthology may be made by email to the Editorial Team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. from your preferred email client.

Please indicate clearly within your email submission whether you give your consent for your authored work within the Living Haiku Anthology to be marked as being licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 licensing.