Mari Warabiny Autumn Ginko

by Maureen Sexton

On Saturday 10th March a group of haiku writers gathered at the First Edition Café for a ginko in the lush, urban Perth Cultural Centre. We were surrounded by the State Library of WA, the Art Gallery of WA, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, the Big Screen, the Urban Orchard, the Native Wetlands, the Interactive Play Space and the WA Museum, currently being refurbished. It was a hot day of 31 degrees, but already leaves were falling and scattering, in typical autumn fashion.

Over coffee and muffins, we shared some of our favourite haiku, and why those particular haiku resonated with us. Then we parted to go on our individual walks to write haiku.

After we re-grouped, we shared the haiku we’d written, and some workshopping followed. This led to an interesting and fairly lively discussion on different schools of thought on various aspects of haiku writing, in particular the use of ‘ing’ words and articles in haiku.

We also looked at some haiku from Jim Kacian’s book after image.

We’re all looking forward to our next ginko, which has been pencilled in for Saturday 9th June.