Cloudcatchers (the haiku group on the Far North Coast of NSW) is three years old. On 5 December 2005, thirteen poets assembled at Torakina Park, Brunswick Heads, where the river meets the sea. Last Friday, 12 December 2008, fifteen enthusiasts gathered at the same place for the summer ginko. Nathalie Buckland presented our usual introduction, “I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, and ask you to think of all of our ancestors, remembering other feet that have trodden this ground before us.”
Day: December 21, 2008
WHAT IS HAIKU? – Week 6
Graham Nunn (Brisbane, Qld)
‘a short poem that captures the true essence of a moment in time.’
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Jan Rikken (The Netherlands)
‘For me a Haiku is the “condensation” of a personal feeling evoked
by a natural phenomenon, into a little poem, without the explicit
expression of that feeling.’
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Duncan Richardson (Brisbane, Qld)
‘ … the classic elements meet what appeals to me in haiku, namely
intensity, capturing the moment and relating to nature in some way, all done in
a very brief manner.’
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Larry Bole (New York City, USA) Paraphrasing U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart:
“I shall not attempt to define the kinds of material I understand to
be embraced within the shorthand description haiku; and perhaps I
could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I
see it.”
Australian Haiku Society 