Day: October 15, 2011

Red Dragonflies Meeting: 15th October 2011

The Red Dragonflies met at Vanessa Proctor’s home in Pymble on Saturday 15th October. Dawn Bruce gave a short talk on haiga, and set the group a challenging and instructive exercise. Members had also been invited to bring along photos of their own which might be turned into haiga, so some little time was spent working with these. We were then encouraged to bring some of our own haiga to the Christmas get-together in November. The haiku workshopped at the meeting was, for the most part, met with resounding approval, so the few hours spent together literally flitted by, just like a dragonfly.

Lesley Walter

Report on Cloudcatchers’ Spring Ginko No.23

A strip of land between sea and fresh water is a magical place. Cloudcatchers assembled for their Spring Ginko at Lake Ainsworth, Lennox Head, on Thursday 13 October 2011, savouring the salt spray from the ocean, which mingled with soft breezes from the banksias and tea-trees lining this tea-coloured lake.

Quiet contemplation allowed an immersion in the ambience of the abundant bird life, with its various rhythms of song, the soft peeling bark of the melaleucas, the gentle lapping of ripples on sandy banks, and a regular resident who was feeding the water dragons from his mechanised chair. Images were scribbled into notebooks during the meditative hour, which seemed to pass too quickly. Hastily constructed first-draft haiku were read around the picnic table, and now some of these, which have been reviewed and refined are being circulated among participants during a Round Robin workshop.

A summer ginko is planned for the first week after school returns in January 2012. If you would like more information, please get in touch with Quendryth Young at: quendrythyoung@bigpond.com.

Quendryth Young
Cloudcatchers Coordinator