Haiku contest stirs anger among the poets over too many syllables

The contest was launched last week to find the haiku that best sums up London in the summer.

It was the first poetry competition in which entries could only be submitted via online messaging service Twitter. With hundreds of entries, organisers were delighted.

Except the British Haiku Society has cried foul over the quality and length of the haikus - essentially Japanese poems, three lines long, typically of five, seven and five syllables.

Annie Bachini, the society's president, said: "These entries are not up to standard. They are using far too many adjectives and far too many syllables. They are also too jokey.

"It is a myth that haiku should be written in 17 syllables. Scholars now generally think that 13 to 14 syllables is more of an equivalent to the Japanese."

The haikus are flashed up on a screen at King's Cross station, and hundreds more have been submitted to the Standard. The contest is being judged by Yoko Ono and poet, playwright and novelist Jackie Kay, who applauded some entries as "really lovely".

The competition has been run by Network Rail and arts venue Kings Place. Kings Place director Peter Millican dismissed the criticism: "The purpose of this project was to get more people writing poems, not fewer."