We Do Haiku: Artists Wax Poetic About Lack of Arts Funding

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When life gives you a dearth of arts funding, make haikus! The Knight Foundation and the University of Wynwood recently cosponsored "Do You Haiku" -- a contest to find the best haikus written about the impact of Miami-Dade's lack of arts funding. They received a grand response; it turns out there's nothing quite like crappy treatment by your local government to really get the poetic juices flowing. Poet and FIU professor Campbell McGrath and University of Wynwood director P. Scott Cunningham reviewed the nearly 500 entries, and the results are in. Local actor Alex Fumero took first place, a prize of $500; artist Jim Drain came in second and was awarded $250. Now let's take each and every one of those 500 haikus and slip them under Mayor Alvarez's door.

Third place: Andrés Solar
Miami bus stop
I wait with my new painting
Hours. Then bus splashes.

Honorable Mentions:

Marlene E. Adams
Enthralled child whispers:
Five days of classical songs
Are stuck in my head.

Ellen Berger
Night out on the town
found the venue was closed down
Two feet from a dance

Doris B. Kraus
Light on the water
Notes singing through the palm fronds
Sudden dusk and still

Pat Singleton
Water quenching thirst...
good food nourishing bodies...
the arts feeding souls.

Margaret Lake
very sunny place
yet the shade is everywhere
shine on in the dark