June has been a month of inspirations and I have managed to catch a few snippets here. Thank you to those who alerted us to various happenings and for sharing your haiku news.
The Winter Solstice has come and gone and our Haiku String to celebrate the occasion attracted a heartening response.
Whether in a drifting fog, the cool grass, a bicycle basket, on a frozen lake, in a bell tower, a creek, a Yamadera classroom or in the underworld, our theme of ‘place’ was approached in many ingenious and surprising ways. Before enjoying the entire String here are a few samples to whet your appetite:
monochrome morning
currawongs busy themselves
in the drifting fog
Gregory Piko
Yass, NSW, Australia
leading the way
flowers in my
bicycle basket
lynnej
Trout Lake Summer market
Vancouver BC
butterfly’s velvet flight
swerves here and there
ends on a petal
Craig Lincoln
USQ Japanese Gardens Toowoomba
frost flowers
bloom on the lake . . .
no word from you
Mayfly 62, Winter 2017
Debbie Strange
British Columbia, Canada
in the cool grass–
green-eyed cat
and wild strawberry
Jill Lange
Cleveland Heights, OH
Yamadera classroom
a trapped yellow hornet
takes over teaching
Kit Nagamura
Yamadera high school, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan
wading through Tunnel Creek echoes of Jandamarra
Leanne Mumford
Tunnel Creek, Kimberley Region, Western Australia
rising dawn
one side of Uluru
holds on to the night
Mark Gilfillan
London – UK
longest night . . .
Tasmanian Tigers pace
the underworld
Ron C. Moss
Tasmania, Australia
bell tower stairway
the race towards
the breaking dawn
Anthony Q. Rabang
Saint Augustine Parish Church Bell Tower,
Bantay, Ilocos Sur, Philippines
We were pleased to receive contributions from near and far, around Australia and from many countries around the world; the global character of the haiku community is indeed one of its very best assets. We thank everyone who contributed to the String and look forward to more of your creative offerings in our next Haiku String scheduled for the Southern Hemisphere Summer Solstice in December.
Ten Years of Haiku with the U3A – Beverley George
For the past ten years I have presented a haiku session for Central Coast U3A (University of the Third Age) members during the first of two annual semesters. These have been conducted indoors in seminar rooms at local libraries and community centres.
This year, for something a little different, the venue changed to outdoors with 2 ginko (haiku walks), one in late summer and one in autumn. These were held at the Gosford/Edogawa Japanese Commemorative Gardens. Delegates to the four-day 4th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in September 2009 will remember that was one of three venues where we enjoyed a ginko, followed by a kukai. (The conference event at the Gardens was followed by a session in the adjacent Regional Gallery attended by 80 people, including the Mayor of Gosford, and the Consul and Vice-consul of Japan in Sydney.)
Those attending the recent small, informal U3A sessions quickly entered into the spirit of haiku, walking quietly on their own and jotting in their notebooks. We met up again in the tea-hut to share our ideas.
photograph courtesy of Rozanne Collins
The gratifying question at the end of both sessions was, “When can we enjoy more haiku?”
The photograph shows several of the eight who attended the autumn ginko casting a lingering look at the Gardens as we left…
Beverley George
Groups & Gatherings
A number of groups met this month to enjoy one another’s company and share their mutual love of haiku and related genres. To catch up on their reports feel free to click on the links below.
Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group
New Resonance 10
Congratulations to Rob Scott and Els van Leeuwen who are amongst the poets featured in the recently released A New Resonance 10: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts and published by Red Moon Press. (Further information, sample haiku and ordering details can be found here).
“New Resonance poets now number nearly 200. They have won scads of contests, their subsequent books have been accorded the honor of serious and adulatory review and critique, and many are recognized amongst the leaders of literary haiku in their respective countries and around the world. This is the tenth volume in a much-awarded series.” (From the web promotion page above).
Other Australian & New Zealand poets to appear in New Resonance include; Jeffrey Harpeng & Vanessa Proctor (A New Resonance 3), Beverley George & Ron Moss (4), Sandra Simpson NZ (5), Paul Hodder (6), Lorin Ford, Greg Piko & Quendryth Young (7) Jonathan McKeown & Scott Terrill (9), Els van Leeuwen, Rob Scott & Dick Whyte NZ (10), (This may not be an exhaustive list, please let me know of any omissions).
A sincere thank you to Lorin Ford for passing on this news.
A Haiku Story
Tokyo metro
the ebb and flow
of frowns
Marietta McGregor
Asahi Haikuist Network, June 16, 2017
The genesis of any particular haiku is often a story in itself and this is certainly the case here. I received a note from David McMurray, founder and editor of the Asahi Haikuist Network, who thought it would be nice for our reader’s to enjoy this very well-conceived haiku. In asking Marietta for her permission to share this on the website I received the following email excerpt.
“That’s good of David McMurray to mention my haiku. Yes, it comes from March/April this year when my husband and I had three weeks travelling in Japan. We branched off from a tour between Tokyo and Osaka to take ourselves on to Shikoku, and ultimately Matsuyama, birthplace of Shiki and the site of a museum in his honour. We met a charming local haijin, Yukari Watanabe, and she took us on a tour of Matsuyama’s newest attraction launched early this year, haiku bars! At the first tiny tucked-away bar we were served food, including the spring seasonal dish of tsukushi – tiny pickled horsetails or clubmoss, which apparently grow in the ditches between the rice fields – then given a haiku name and asked to write a haiku, in my case, about tsukushi! Then on to the next bar, for cocktails which are mixed according to the haiku you write! Great fun, a sort of haiku pub crawl, in the nicest way!
Yukari presented me with a new guidebook, Cool Matsuyama, a haiku guidebook in English produced by the local tourism office and given to visitors, and I was amazed and delighted to see my own haiku featured because I gained the excellence award in last year’s Matsuyama / Ehime Photo Haiku contest. The Haiku Guidebook gives some useful instruction on writing haiku, including seasonal references. Visitors are encouraged to write haiku and place them in the many haiku boxes all around the city. For interest, a pdf of the Guidebook is also on-line.
Best wishes,
Marietta”
If you have an interesting haiku story we’d love to about it.
re:Virals
The Haiku Foundation’s weekly haiku commentary feature re:Virals posted some particularly interesting thoughts recently on a fascinating haiku by Geraldine Little, including comments from Nathan Sidney and Lorin Ford. Well worth a read
Windfall reminder: July is the month to submit up to six haiku on subjects relevant to Australia to Beverley George for consideration in the next issue of Windfall. Full details can be found here.
Australian Haiku Society 