Hearty congratulations to Helen Davison for having achieved the highest distinction in her category – Best International Haiku in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival – 2014 Haiku Invitational, with her haiku
bridge crossing . . .
the full moon sprinkled with
cherry blossoms
Judge’s comment:
Continue reading “Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival – 2014 Haiku Invitational”
Hearty congratulations to Helen Davison for having achieved the highest distinction in her category – Best International Haiku in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival – 2014 Haiku Invitational, with her haiku
bridge crossing . . .
the full moon sprinkled with
cherry blossoms
Continue reading “Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival – 2014 Haiku Invitational”
Clancy McDowell, Broome –
under a bright moon
salmon flipping
in the tin boat hull
Lynette Arden handed out information on the life of Janice Bostok, including comments about Janice’s impact on haiku poetry in Australia and USA.
The thirty-fourth ginko of the Cloudcatchers was held on Thursday 31 July 2014 at the site where it all began in December 2005; Torakina Park at Brunswick Heads. It was the mid-winter ginko, but a strange weather pattern had us absorbing the ambience of this beachside location in gloriously warming winter sunshine.
The beach was dotted with dads and toddlers, who featured strongly in many haiku. John Bird noted one of the little ones wading off in the direction of New Zealand. There were ample bush turkeys to challenge little boys, and in spite of excited young voices there was the usual abundance of birdsong in the surrounding tuckeroos and banksias. Recently published haiku were shared before the silence, which was followed by the round-table reading and workshopping of first drafts. Ten Cloudcatchers participated, and we continued the camaraderie at The Bruns (hotel) over lunch together. The Winter Round Robin is currently under way.
Quendryth Young
The Red Dragonflies, with the inclusion of guest, Bill Tibben, held their winter meeting on Saturday 19th July at Vanessa Proctor’s home. With the smells of freshly baked bread and buttermilk cake with passionfruit icing wafting about us, we workshopped our pre-set exercises which had presented the usual challenge, i.e. to compose original haiku on topics including a night in the country, a winter plant, and International Friendship Day.
Lorin Ford has made her book of haiku, ‘a wattle seedpod’ (PostPressed, 2008) available to all as a free pdf download from the The Haiku Foundation Digital Library. As well as 109 haiku, ‘a wattle seedpod’ has a cover by Ron Moss and a foreword by John Bird, founder of HaikuOz.
www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/175
‘a wattle seedpod’ won first prize in the 2009 HSA Mildred Kanterman Merit Book Awards, the first book by an Australian author to be awarded that honour.
Over the summer holidays I read two informative, inspirational and professional books on haiku that featured the work of a wide range of influential poets from Britain, America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Haiku in English – The First Hundred Years, edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns with an Introduction by Billy Collins. First edition printed in the USA, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 andWhere the River Goes – The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku
edited by Allan Burns. First edition published by Snapshot Press, Orchard House, High Lane, Ormskirk L40 7sl in great Britain in 2013.
Australian Haiku Society 