7th March 2023
It wasn’t drought or flooding rain that prevented our planned ginko at Oatley Park today, just extreme heat, so we decided to meet in air conditioned comfort at my home.
Six members attended: Margaret Mahony, Carol Reynolds, Patricia Meredith, Rita Potente, Joy Bye and Alison Miller. Ros Pitt sent her apologies. We hope our new recruit, Therese Lew, will be available to attend our next meeting.
The meeting began with invitations to members to participate in the newly established Gadigal Ginko to be led by Leanne Mumford and submit to the next issue of Echidna Tracks. On behalf of Illawong Haiku Group, I would like to thank the AHS committee and Echidna Tracks Administrators for the work they do to provide opportunities for interaction between Australian haiku writers in particular.
There were some interesting and creative haiku resulting from our set exercise on the theme ‘Food and Seasons’ inspired by a recent podcast presentation on Poetry Pea by Allyson Whipple.
Equipped with copies of all the responses, each member was given 15 minutes to read through and make commentary notes. Each haiku was then discussed in turn and it was most interesting to hear the differing interpretations and suggestions for improvement. Allowing each person some quiet time to think about each haiku before discussion proved beneficial, particularly to our newer writers.
As always, there were plenty of offerings to choose from our haiku bowl, including some written by Basho, which were shared around the lunch table. This activity is always a source of enjoyment at our meetings.
We finished chatting around 1.30 pm after a constructive meeting and in the hope that the weather will allow us to have a ginko in Winter.
PS Don’t forget to take a photo next time!
Report by Carol Reynolds
Australian Haiku Society 