Author: Lynette Arden

AHS Haiga Kukai – Call for submissions 

The AHA is delighted to announce that it will be holding its first Haiga Kukai on the first day of spring.  Two images by Ron Moss will be displayed on the AHA website from 1st September and poets are invited to submit one previously unpublished haiku inspired by each image from that time until 7th September.  Ron will then select the winning haiku which will be displayed on the AHA website.

Please note that if more than one haiku per image is submitted by any individual, only the first haiku sent will be considered.

Submissions will only be accepted if entered in the comments section.

By entering the competition, entrants agree to make their haiku available for use on the AHS website, although the copyright will remain with the author

No correspondence will be entered into regarding winning entries.

WOLLUMBIN HAIKU WORKSHOP

Wollumbin Haiku Workshop was formed in 2004 by John Bird, who invited Nathalie Buckland and Quendryth Young, all members of the Australian Haiku Society, to join him in discussing the haiku genre, the sharing of literature and rigorous criticism of each others’ work. Full-day monthly gatherings were held at the home of Quendryth in Alstonville NSW, with Nathalie and John travelling 50 and 45 kilometers respectively.

Continue reading “WOLLUMBIN HAIKU WORKSHOP”

Cloudcatchers Ginko No. 42 (winter)

9.30 am at Bangalow Weir, NSW

Thursday 4 August 2016

Wild-wild winds and rain hurtled up the coastline of the Far North Coast all the night before, with outside furniture flung across courtyards, trees down, and litter all over the roads. The ginko was in doubt, but twelve Cloudcatchers gathered anyway. The venue was the Bangalow Weir on Byron Creek, an inland waterway coursing via the Wilson and Richmond Rivers to the sea. This was the winter weather of where we live, and we were in it. Continue reading “Cloudcatchers Ginko No. 42 (winter)”

Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group Meeting 6 August 2016

Our meeting started at 12.30 pm, in our usual venue of the Box Factory. Lee Bentley led the group for a session on renku, starting with an outline of the history of renku and then talking about some of the principles of renku writing, chiefly link and shift.

Continue reading “Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group Meeting 6 August 2016”

New Committee Members — Simon Hanson and Jan Dobb

The AHS is delighted to welcome two new committee members.  Simon Hanson joined us in June as joint Regional Representative for Queensland and has undertaken the job of selecting and posting our Featured Haiku every week.  Jan Dobb joined us this month as our very first Regional Representative for the ACT.  For further information please visit our Committee page.

Vanessa Proctor

Winter Meeting of the Red Dragonflies

The winter meeting of the Red Dragonflies had to be postponed from the usual Saturday because of that particular weekend’s stormy weather and so was held on Monday, 20th June, 11 to 2pm at convenor Vanessa Proctor’s home in Pymble.
Barbara Fisher, Beverley George and Cynthia Rowe were present. There were only four of us because Dawn Bruce was overseas and, to our great sadness our much-loved member, Lesley Walter, died in May.

We began our meeting with tributes to Lesley, whose incisive and insightful haiku had always given us so much pleasure. Her poems were so fresh and original and often reflected her great sense of humour. Each of us read haiku we had written and dedicated to her. These were handwritten (by Vanessa) in a card and sent to her family. Continue reading “Winter Meeting of the Red Dragonflies”

A Metaphor and a Milestone

The upstairs room of The Children’s Bookshop at Beecroft was filled to capacity on Saturday 28 May with an appreciative audience attending back-to-back afternoon events celebrating collaborative poetry and the tanka form.

In the first event Vanessa Proctor, President of the Australian Haiku Society, launched A Shared Umbrella. This joint project by Beverley George and David Terelinck is a collection of ten tanka sequences and thirteen rengay written over several years of collaboration.

Vanessa elaborated on the title metaphor, illustrated so enchantingly on the book cover by South African artist Tumi K. Steyn.  The cover, in a pleasing shade of gold with autumnal notes, features a traditional Japanese umbrella, or wagasa. To quote Vanessa:

“To share such an umbrella with someone, you need to stand close in order to be able to share the space together, to walk in step.  That walking in step is an art which Beverley and David have mastered beautifully.” Continue reading “A Metaphor and a Milestone”