Fish Publishing Haiku Prize
Deadline extended to April 25, 2026
Mary-Jane Holmes will judge the Haiku Prize sponsored by Fish Publishing. She will select 10 haiku to be published in the Fish Anthology 2026, which will be launched during the West Cork Literary Festival in July. Each winner will receive $132.
Haiku and Senryu are a Japanese form of short poetry. Senryu tend to be about human foibles while Haiku tend to be about nature. Traditional Haiku and Senryu consist of 17 syllables, in three lines, 5, 7, and 5. Many poets do not rigidly adhere to this and nor will we. Both Haiku and Senryu are welcome!
Submit unpublished work. Entry fee: $6. This contest is open to writers of any nationality writing in English.
See the complete guidelines and enter here.
A Forward Prize nominee and Hawthornden Fellow, Mary-Jane Holmes has won the Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2020, Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize 2020, the Bridport Poetry prize, Martin Starkie, Dromineer, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash prize as well as the Bedford Poetry competition. She has also been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. Mary-Jane's debut poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press. Her pamphlet Dihedral is published by Live Canon Press and her award-winning novella Don't Tell the Bees, is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her Lockdown poem "Letter from Baldersdale" joins 20 other poems in the National Poetry Archive on their 20th anniversary.
