Tuesday 15 September 2020
Group members Patricia Meredith, Alison Miller, Ros Pitt and Margaret Mahony met at Carol Reynolds lovely home at Illawong which is close to the bush and looking full of new life this Spring. Lana was unable to attend but we hope to see her at our Summer meeting.
Since our last meeting we have kept in contact via iPhone and Internet with a ‘haiga’ round robin exercise. The person who wrote the best haiku supplied the next image and so on. After four rounds Carol asked Vanessa Proctor if she would be willing to provide commentary on the haiku that had been submitted. Vanessa graciously accepted and responded with plenty of guidance and encouragement. Use of personification and reliance on just one seasonal word as the fragment were some of the recurring issues mentioned. The feedback will be helpful to all the group, particularly our new writers. Thank you Vanessa.
We briefly discussed Vanessa’s comments over a delicious morning tea of fresh jam and cream sponge and Armenian Nutmeg cake home baked by Ros. Clearly more time to read and absorb the information was required so we decided to take the information home and report back.
We had a lot of fun tossing around ideas for a new image from Ros, our previous winner, as well as the image from the Australian Haiku Society in readiness for the Spring Equinox Haiku String. Patricia, who is not connected electronically, came well prepared as always with her list of recently compiled haiku for discussion.
After morning tea Carol drove everyone to a nearby bush track for our Ginko where we could see glimpses of the Woronora River and delighted in the wildflowers including Pink Wax, Hardenbergia, Egg and Bacon plant, Native Iris and other plants that were not so familiar. Most photographed was the huge Angophora. Plenty of ideas for haiku.
We returned to a tasty al fresco lunch of soup and soda bread, specially baked by Margaret. On the back deck surrounded by trees, birds and flowers we finished off with servings of haiku from our haiku bowl.
About 2pm we said our goodbyes and went home full of the joy of haiku.
Report by Margaret Mahony and Carol Reynolds
Australian Haiku Society 