Author: Simon Hanson

Windfall: Australian Haiku Issue 9, 2021 – Review

Review by Simon Hanson

How fortunate we are to have a journal like Windfall: Australian Haiku, showcasing as it does, the best of Australian haiku— bringing together familiar and new voices (and the new voices are exciting). This issue, like those before it celebrates many and varied aspects of Australian life in its country, coastal, urban and domestic settings accompanied by a host of perceptive observations around season, landform, flora and fauna and the lives of people.

we slow our stroll
to another time
outback town

Glenys Ferguson

perching magpie
the blackened stump
seamed with ash

Gavin Austin

Continue reading “Windfall: Australian Haiku Issue 9, 2021 – Review”

White Pebbles Haiku Group Winter 2021

At our winter meeting the seven members who attended were joined by two welcome guests, Carol Reynolds and Margaret Mahony. Another member, Samantha Hyde, although unable to be present, sent a completed worksheet well ahead of time and we were glad to include her valued poetry in our workshopping session.

As always we met at 10 a.m. for coffee and informal chat before heading off at precisely 10:30 on our ginko. The weather was cold but fine and the garden so delightful to view from the many aspects its winding pathway affords. A large Japanese maple stirring in the breeze drew the attention of every poet.

Continue reading “White Pebbles Haiku Group Winter 2021”

Members’ News, May 2021

Golden jelly cones, Guepiniopsis alpina (fungi) Tasmania: photo by Simon Hanson

Welcome to our May Members’ Newsletter; can you believe it, June already. This is a fairly thin edition and I am bound to have missed some of the many happenings that have occurred over the last month (my apologies). Please feel free to send us any potentially newsworthy items, I know there is a lot of interesting stuff going on out there that we don’t always hear about.

Continue reading “Members’ News, May 2021”

Cloudcatchers Autumn Ginko # 61


Thursday 29 April 2021
Virtual ginko
10 am onwards

As a number of our members were experiencing tricky personal situations, our autumn ginko became a ‘virtual’ one. There were ten of us, each maintaining silence in her own home and/or environment on the Far North Coast of NSW, ranging from Murwillumbah in the north to Coffs Harbour in the south, with one member joining us from Avalon in Sydney. Commencing at 10 am, each poet thought of every other participant, and then proceeded to observe and write for at least an hour.

What an incredible bonding the stimulation of haiku images has delivered to us once again, as we savoured the camaraderie of another ginko.

Continue reading “Cloudcatchers Autumn Ginko # 61”

Review of Paperbark Haiku Zoom Meeting

Friday 30th April 2021
11 am Perth,Western Australia time
by Maureen Sexton

Seven people ‘attended’ the zoom meeting. They were Michael Dylan Welch (USA), Rose van Son (WA), Lynette Arden (SA), Liz Nicholls (WA), Wanda Amos (NSW), Madhuri Pillai (Vic) and Maureen Sexton (WA). Each attendee shared the details of their personal ginko, i.e. where they were, what the weather and surrounds was like and three each of the haiku they wrote from that ginko. There was lively and thorough discussion of each haiku with some generous and helpful suggestions offered. This was followed by some interesting and thoughtful discussion on various aspects of writing haiku, such as lineation, experimental writing and what makes a haiku, a haiku. Or in other words, what isn’t a haiku. Thank you Michael Dylan Welch for letting us use his Zoom pro account, so we didn’t have a time limit. Much appreciated.

Here is what each ‘attendee’ has to offer from the meeting:

Continue reading “Review of Paperbark Haiku Zoom Meeting”