The venue for the 19th Bowerbird Tanka workshop was not this time ‘Wirraminna’ but the newly upgraded gardeners’ cottage in the Crommelin Native Arboretum, in Pearl Beach. The venue proved very satisfactory and inspiring for the 13 delegates, with wide double doors of the cottage opening to a grassy slope. The two main workshops on music (Hazel Hall) and tanka as medication (Carmel Summers) were well-received. You can read about them in the report by Kent Robinson on the Eucalypt web-site under the heading Bowerbird along with tanka appraisals by Beatrice Yell and Yvonne Hales and a fitting celebration of the landscape around us by Michael Thorley which alluded to the many tanka about trees published in the first issue of “Eucalypt: a tanka journal”.
For many of the Bowerbird poets this location was a pleasant reminder of when they walked there on the final day of the 4th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference September 2009 and wrote poems to paste up in the Village Hall for all present on the day to enjoy. Thanks to everyone who sent me warm comments about the meeting and the locale. Now for some nice follow-up news:
I have heard from Ms Ann Parsons, vice-president of the Crommelin Native Arboretum Inc. that the arboretum has been declared the winner of the Habitat and Wildlife Conservation Award as part of the Tidy Towns Awards held in Orange recently. The next Bowerbird meeting will also be held in the cottage.
Beverley George
Convenor
Bowerbird Tanka Group
Australian Haiku Society 