Readers’ competition: The best travel haikus revealed

Travel moved many of you to enter our haiku competition

Torsakarin / Thinkstock

It’s heartening to know that in the age of mindless pursuits like Candy Crush Saga so many of you are still moved by poetry; simple words, beautifully arranged.

Our recent haiku competition, held in conjunction with our good friends at Stanfords, attracted more entries than we could shake a stanza at: our Twitter feed lit up, emails came flooding in. We were so excited that we wrote our own haiku about the judging process:

Tough going it was
To pick the prize-worthy prose
But here: the winners

Midnight moon beckons
Shimmering waves kiss the shore
Hourglass sand whispers
Sinothile Baloyi, Glasgow, UK

Perpendicular
Food stands crowd the Beijing street
Where we dare to eat
Tweet Sized Fiction, New York, USA

The old butchers’ shops
Are jewellers’ now. Otherwise,
The scene is timeless
Bob Jones, London, UK 

Stone old as language
What would the Romans think of
"Jaz woz ere '15"
Sammi McSporran, Telford, UK

Hours at the station
We watch the old ceiling fan
Churn time like butter
Charlotte Segaller, Glastonbury, UK

Nothing to declare
Except the Khmer ghosts that'll
Follow me always
Oliver Futter, Gateshead, UK

Congratulations to the scribes above. Sadly, if your haiku isn’t listed above, you didn’t win one of the six travel books that we had to give away. That’s not to say we didn’t dig your prose: there were many fine submissions that aren’t listed above, and our judges had their work cut out choosing the victors.

Winner or not, we hope you’ll join us for the next competition. In the meantime don’t forget to keep your eyes on an even bigger prize: The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, which will be hosted on 28 September.

The glittering gala will reveal the year’s best travel book and unveil the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing 2015. Follow @estravelawards on Twitter for more information.