June 13, 2024 – Australian Haiku Society

Como Pleasure Grounds, Tuesday 3rd June 2024

Carol Reynolds, Ros Pitt, Alison Miller

And then the sun…
With one eye on the BOM site and a venue inspection conducted the day before to make sure it hadn’t turned into a lake, our decision to go ahead rested firmly in the hands of Mother Nature. Fortunately she decided in our favour.

Margaret Mahony, Ros Pitt, Alison Miller, Rita Potente, Carol Reynolds and visitor Kath Kuziak attended suitably attired for the weather. Unfortunately Patricia Meredith was unable to join us.

The colder weather was in our favour as the location is usually much busier. We quickly commandeered a table sheltered from the prevailing westerly wind by the natural landform located in the heart of the grounds and where some sun was peeping through the shade. As always we started out with a hot cuppa and to warm our spirits we read in turn the haiku voted most popular from The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku Dialogue for May on the theme ‘yellow’.

Then it was down to business. After hearing about members recent achievements, Carol provided an update on the multitude of haiku happenings and opportunities currently available for submission. This included how to get further information on the Haiku Down Under 2024 virtual conference being held August 16-18, and encouraging registration which is free and available until 11th August. More information available here.

Our first exercise was hearing some of the recent haiku written by members and the inspiration and transition of their haiku. The second exercise was set to encourage members to open their eyes to the scale of participation in haiku throughout the world – to delve deeper into the many opportunities available on the internet to see, read and learn about haiku and the Japanese poetry genre in general.

One of these ways was to explore The Haiku Foundation’s HaikuLife Film Festival. The exercise was to make a list of five haiku that resonated. It was interesting to hear the variety of haiku choices and the responses to some of the vision.

It was a jam-packed meeting and we almost forgot to have our ginko walk. The sun had moved by then so we upped stakes and had a short walk to gather inspiration. We relocated to the sun-drenched benches on the water’s edge to enjoy our prepacked picnic lunches and discuss the findings from our walk. By then the winter chill was starting to seep into our bones so home fires beckoned.

It was agreed by all who attended that Como Pleasure Grounds is an ideal place offering a lot of inspiration for a ginko and we will come again.