Rojonekku Hand-to-Hand Haiku tournaments were developed by Raven Mack and his students in Southern Virginia. They are a variation on haiku battles that have existed as an off-shoot to poetry slams for the past decade. The idea is to be all-inclusive, of styles of poet, of types of people, and of modes of thinking so as to cultivate as wide a diversity of short poems as possible. (Raven Mack says, "Our world needs more diversity. And then that diversity needs to be more diverse. Ten shades of the same thought is not diversity. Ten different thoughts is.") Attendees will get a chance to write their own haiku at the beginning and then choose to participate in a battle royal at the end of the tournament.
Our judges are Kara Candito, Justice Casteneda, and Genia Daniels. Participants include: F.J. Bergmann, Donna Carnes, Ron Czerwien, Heath Langreck, Jessika Pasch, James Roberts, Richard Roe, and Jeanie Tomasko.
