What I wish to say at this very moment should not take longer than my haiku and I hope it will not take longer in spite of consisting of more than 17 on.

Winning this Grand Prize in The 2009 Special Kukai in memory of William J. Higginson is an infinite honor to me.

I would like to kindly thank Japan for haiku, Matsuyama University’s Shiki Team,
The Ehime Culture Foundation and Haikuworld for sponsoring this special haiku competition in honor of William J. Higginson.I owe special thanks to Matsuyama University’s Shiki Team for inviting me to this place filled with spirit of haiku.

A few years ago I came across certain tiny little book. On one of its pages there was the haiku about the frog.

Today I think that this fresh sound of old pond, which I still can hear, made me carry that little book with me wherever I traveled.

My last trip brought me here and my haiku to Japan – the homeland of Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki. To the place where haiku has its roots. Could I possibly expect anything more beautiful than setting my foot on the soil so far away from Poland because of a few words composing into a resonant haiku poem? And to be aware that this poem has become a meeting point for the sensitivity of haiku poets from different corners of the World, equally distant from one another. As this is why I am here now.

I am here also thanks to the many years of William Higginson’s effort, as an American fascinated with Japanese poetry, to bridge its language to lands far beyond the Country of Blossoming Cherry Tree.

Not far away from my house there is a beautiful park. There is a brook flowing through the park, where at some place it becomes a waterfall. That was where I heard whiteness.

whiteness
the water falls
into its sound

How thankful I am to Everybody whom I have met so far on my way heading towards haiku.

I know it is just a beginning and that makes me even more curious about the path itself.

Thank you very much.