White Pebbles Haiku Group

Summer meeting report

The White Pebbles Haiku Group has been meeting once every season for the past seven years at the splendid Gosford/Edogawa Commemorative Garden. For our summer ginko on Saturday 14th December, Beverley George (founder and convener), Michael Thorley, Kent Robinson, Maire Glacken and Samantha Sirimanne Hyde caught up first at the Art Centre’s café. We missed members Marilyn Humbert, Gwen Bitti, Colleen Keating and Pip Griffin who had sent in their apologies.

Clear blue skies and a warm breeze greeted us as we each made our way into the gardens, taking whichever path enticed us. Kent’s suggestion of contemplating on one aspect or item within the garden as a prompt to write a haiku was eagerly taken up by the group, in this case – the mini waterfall. Later, sharing our efforts, we appreciated each other’s sensory impressions – from hearing the gush of the waterfall before viewing it to marvelling at how a fragile ladder of spider silk had been ingeniously built across it.
The pathways led us to the raked dry stone garden, the wooden bridge over the koi-filled pond and the traditional Japanese teahouse while waddling ducks, children’s joyous squeals and the fragrance of gardenias added delight.

Later, we gathered around the table in the gallery’s downstairs meeting room. We shared our homework – haiku penned about jacarandas, the Christmas bush and other seasonal flowers. A few poems were also exchanged about the recent shifting weather patterns and unpredictable forecasts. Beverley then encouraged poets who had haiku published recently in Echidna Tracks or other journals to read them aloud.
As always, we appreciated each other’s work as well as the helpful and considered feedback and exchanged season’s greetings before wrapping up until our autumn catch up in March.

After lunch, some of us took the opportunity to enjoy a presentation of sumi-e (Japanese ink art) paintings by Japanese artist and Central Coast resident Tomoko Oka called ‘The Crane and the Kookaburra’ at the Gosford Regional Gallery. It is a whimsical collection of art exploring the delights, amusements and disappointments of encountering another culture, portrayed through the Australian kookaburra and Japanese crane. The gallery’s introduction to Oka expresses, ‘We are invited to reflect on our own interaction with other cultures, and how meeting people from other nations can open our eyes to the interest and beauty we can find in what is foreign to us.’
A fitting end to our year’s shared interest in the all-encompassing art of haiku poetry.

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde