Marcellin Dallaire-Beaumont
petals in the wind
my girlfriend is never
where I expect her
Marcellin Dallaire-Beaumont
Brussels, Belgium
Congratulations on having your haiku selected as the top winner in the International category in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s 2020 Haiku Invitational contest. How did you first learn about haiku, and how much writing of haiku or other poetry have you done?
A contest explained what a haiku is. I liked the idea. I wrote a few of them. I sent a selection of them in. The virus was inoculated (up-to-date metaphor).
What was the inspiration for your winning poem?
For the first line: I searched for a nice sentence related to the theme of cherry blossom. Then, after finding it, I related it with events of my own life.
Describe the moment when you first learned you had won.
So unexpected! I like to write on a given theme, but I never thought I could win an award, and even less a first prize.
Do you have favourite books or websites relating to haiku that others might benefit from in order to learn haiku as a literary art and to share one’s haiku?
All I know about haiku is Serge Tomé’s Tempslibres (Free Times) website at https://www.tempslibres.org/. It’s a Belgian site, written in French and English.
Please tell us more about yourself.
I like books, to walk in nature, to sit on terraces drinking coffee or red wine. I’m a civil servant in a big administration; and for the moment I live alone.
How does where you live and what you enjoy doing affect the way you write haiku?
I spend a large part of my life at work, but I almost never write haiku about the office world. Astonishing, isn’t it?