International Haiku Competition 2021
This year was another occasion in which Gimnazija Vič was in charge of organising the International Haiku Competition and making sure that it remained as successful as previous projects.
Putting together plans for such a competition while so many countries still faced school closures and when it was impossible for mentors to travel in order to meet up and discuss new ideas created its fair share of challenges. However, through hard work and determination from our Slovenian team and those leading the project in our partner schools in other countries, we managed to succeed in giving our students the chance to learn more about haiku poetry and to express themselves in such a way.
Hundreds of pieces were submitted from the five countries involved in this year’s projects and the judging committee in Slovenia had the difficult task of coming up with a shortlist of poems which would be presented to the group and then an even smaller selection for which the writers would receive a special commendation.
Towards the end of the competition, our team made the decision to present this year’s shortlisted pieces in video form as a change from the usual booklet which is usually published to mark the conclusion of the project. This decision was made to give a different perspective of the work, to allow the young poets to hear their pieces of haiku being performed, and to give those people outside Slovenia a chance to find out a little bit more about Ljubljana and Gimnazija Vič.
A team of students worked hard to learn scripts, prepare background music, organise filming schedules, and carry out all the work on the technical side of the video as well. We would like to thank all those who worked on the video presentation with a special mention for Matej Mivšek who acted as the lead student mentor for this part of the project.
Special thanks must also go to the students and mentors from our partner schools who, through their determination and dedication through the school year, ensured that the project could go ahead.
This year, the project involved the following educational institutions:
- Beşiktaş Atatürk Anadolu Lisesi in Istanbul, Turkey
- Gimnazija Pula in Pula, Croatia
- Državni Znanstveni Licej Franceta Prešerna in Trieste, Italy
- Közgazdasági Politechnikum in Budapest, Hungary
- Gimnazija Vič in Ljubljana, Slovenia
All that is left to say is that we very much look forward to working with our international partners in other such projects in the future and that we hope you enjoy watching the video presentation of the shortlisted pieces for the International Haiku Competition 2021.