For the last eight weeks, Civil Beat’s inbox has been pinging day and night with some unusual messages for an accountability-focused newsroom to receive: poems celebrating — and sometimes roasting — the diverse neighborhoods we call home. 

Since launching this year’s Neighborhood Haiku competition at the end of October, we’ve received roughly 350 submissions from readers around the state. The contest, which Civil Beat first held in 2019, puts a local twist on the traditional Japanese poem structure by asking readers to use the five digits of their ZIP code as the syllable count for each line. 

The poems we’ve received have been, by turns, beautiful, humorous, insightful, even funny. Together, they are a celebration of the islands’ past and present.

In a newsroom where we’re most often asking readers to contact us about the problems and injustices in their communities, hearing what people love and value about their home has been a source of sheer delight over the holidays. In fact, we love so many of the poems — even some of the ones that we’ve disqualified for not sticking to the syllable count — that we can’t bring ourselves to choose a winner from the finalists. Help us by voting for your favorite by Jan. 3 and we’ll share the results in a Morning Beat newsletter in the coming weeks.