Girl’s haiku makes her big in Japan
A BRITISH girl is a celebrity in Japan after writing a prize-winning haiku – the country’s traditional threeline form of poetry.
Gracie Starkey, 14, beat 18,248 entries to be the first non-Japanese winner of the English haiku category in a contest run by green tea firm Ito En.
Now her lines – Freshly mown grass/Clinging to my shoes/My muddled thoughts – and name will be on millions of its bottles in English and Japanese.
Gracie, of Stroud, Glos, who is learning Japanese at school, was flown to Tokyo for the awards and was mobbed by media.
Telling how she gave a speech at the ceremony, she said: “I spoke a little in Japanese explaining who I was, my age and about my school and friends.”