An Australian scientist has won the prestigious Nakaniida Grand Haiku Prize for a collection of poetry written in Japanese.
Awarded annually for the best debut work in Japanese by a haiku poet, the 300,000 yen prize this year went to Dhugal Lindsay, a 31-year old marine biologist from Queensland, Australia.
Lindsay's collection "Mutsugoro (The Mudskipper)" contains 290 haiku composed between 1991 and 2001. As an afterword, there is an eight-page essay in which Lindsay sets out his haiku philosophy and presents his thoughts on the future of the genre. "Mutsugoro" was selected from a field of more than 100 nominated works.