Food Haiku Contest

April is National Poetry Month. In this spirit, we're launching the Foodista Food Haiku Contest.

All month long, we're looking for your best food-related haikus via Twitter or posted to our Facebook wall-- if you're tweeting, simply include @Foodista at the end of your tweets so we can acknowledge your masterpieces (this does not count towards your haiku's syllable limit).

In case you need a high school English refresher, Haiku is a three-line poem with 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second, and 5 again on the third. Because of this lingual limitation, haiku is one of the most Twitter-friendly forms of poetry-- try squeezing a Shakespearean sonnet into 140 characters.

Your food haikus can convey the humor of eating something that isn't what you thought it was, the sweetness of a memory of your grandmother baking pie, the sadness of finishing the last delicious morsel of your favorite dish-- any emotion you wish to express. The only requirements are that it be a legitimate haiku (no 5-7-6, people) and about food.

We'll pick our favorite composition at the end of the month (4/30), and send that culinary Matsuo Bash? a Foodista apron and a copy of Dessert Haiku: Petite Desserts for the Sweet Tooth & Poetry for the Soul.

In case you need some inspiration, here's our graphic designer Karlyn's first attempt:

Lo! A crimson grape
I bite into its smooth flesh
Yuck, it's an olive :P

And if you want to really learn how it's done, Miss Yu of Tops in Toronto combines haiku and photography for a lush visual experience-- brilliant.

image by sleepyneko