Season 3 Haiku Contest Voting Explanation + Round 1, Heat 1 (Patreon)

Loyal Patrons,

The time has come to decide on the Grand Champion of the Haiku Contest! As with our Season 2 contest, we are giving out four prizes: one awarded by random lot, one to each of Thom and Nina's favorite poems, and one Grand Prize determined by you. 

Because of the sheer number of entries we received (more than 220!) we'll be doing the voting in rounds, with haiku assigned to different heats in the early rounds. All the poems have been randomly assigned to their heats and anonymized for voting purposes.

Entries will be posted in the following format:

Title (if any):  First Line  --  Second Line  --  Third Line

To avoid overwhelming you with these posts, each heat will be ten poems and I'll be posting only the first two three today. Voting for each heat will last 3 days, and new heats will be posted every day so check back regularly! This poll will end at 11:59 PM New Yark Time, March 23.

Finally, many entrants created poem-enhancing visuals to accompany their poems. We love these, but to ensure fairness we're presenting all the poems in text-only format. Once the contest is over we'll be sure to share some of our favorites here.