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Members’ News April 2026

Welcome to the second issue of the Australian Haiku Society’s Members’ News for 2026. This edition focuses on two upcoming events, and includes notices for two journal submission opportunities, plus contest success news. Read on for details.

President’s Message

In this time of global uncertainty, with wars in other parts of the world that nonetheless impact our daily lives in Australia, as well as increasingly unpredictable extreme weather driven by climate change, haiku poetry can be a wonderful balm. It might be through composing haiku by paying attention to our immediate surroundings and circumstances or finding inspiration in small and otherwise mundane chores and observations. It might be through connecting with other poets on a ginko, in a workshop or simply by reading their poems, which inevitably bring different perspectives to our own lives. And in these difficult economic times, haiku can be a very inexpensive passion to pursue.

And speaking of connecting with others through haiku, ‘connection’ will be the theme of our International Haiku Poetry Day event this year.

The AHS Executive Committee met on 16th March. We confirmed that we will be running the fourth contest for the John Bird Dreaming Award for Haiku, opening for submissions towards the end of this year and closing in early 2027. To celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day on 17th April, this year we will be running a haiku string on the theme of ‘connection’. The mentoring trial has concluded and we are currently evaluating it. We will have more news on future mentorships in due course. A haiku reading event with Queensland poets will take place on 22 April. Our new Secretary is in the process of learning the ropes, and will soon be responding to inquiries.

Leanne Mumford

International Haiku Poetry Day, 17 April 2026

International Haiku Poetry Day is celebrated every year on 17th April. This year the Australian Haiku Society will be conducting a Haiku String event. We welcome contributions from haiku poets worldwide. The string will open on Friday 17th April Australian time and will remain open until 24th April. The theme of this string is ‘connections’.

Connections is a broad theme. Connection can take many forms and be between or to different kinds of entities. Connections might be between people or other living things, to nature or spirit, to place, history or culture. We invite you to explore through haiku and senryu varied connections in your own life and the wider world we all share. Further details are coming soon.

While AHS will be running a haiku string, we also invite poets and groups around Australia to celebrate International Haiku Poetry Day in other ways, including out in your community. Poets from Melbourne’s Fringe Myrtles group will be reading at Woodend Chamber Poets on 18th April.

What will you be doing? Please use the Contact Secretary form to let us know so we can promote your event or include a report on your activity in the next Members’ News.

If you are stuck for ideas, here are a few. Some are easy to organise spontaneously and others take a little more planning.

Display haiku in your local library. This could be in the form of a ‘Haiku Wall’, or something more elaborate, such as a cherry tree made of cardboard. People could write haiku on pink blossom shapes to pin onto the tree.
Organise a ginko at the zoo. You could even ask to have a display or reading while you are there.
Leave a haiku or a chap-book of haiku anonymously somewhere public, such as on public transport or at a local café – anywhere you can think of where people might find them.
In a similar vein, write haiku on rocks, leaves, bark, etc and leave those items in public places, such as neighbourhood parks. Or write them on postcards and leave them in cafes, your local library, etc. Write haiku on kites and fly them in parks, on beaches, etc.
Post some of your haiku to your local community Facebook group.
Offer to read some haiku on your local community radio station.
Planning further ahead, many cities around Australia hold Japan Festivals that typically showcase aspects of Japanese culture. Why not approach the organisers about your group displaying or reading haiku in English as a demonstration of Japanese culture adapted to Australia?
Or is there a local writers’ festival in your area that might be willing to host a haiku reading event?

Queensland Poets Haiku Reading Event, 22 April

AHS is hosting an online reading by Queensland haiku poets on Wednesday 22nd April from 7.30pm AEST. While Queensland poets will be reading, the event is free and open to all interested poets to join. However, you must register by 9am AEST on 22nd April to receive the Zoom link. The programme will include a brief presentation from AHS, the planned readings and an ‘open mic’ session.
Link for the Registration form.

Submission Windows for Australian Haiku Journals

Echidna Tracks

Echidna Tracks will now become an international publication, and welcomes submissions from haiku poets worldwide. As Echidna Tracks nominates haiku for the Touchstone Awards and the annual Red Moon Press anthology, be sure to send your best previously unpublished haiku/senryu on any topic. Gavin Austin and Marilyn Humbert will be the haiku editors for the next issue.

Submissions for Issue 17 will be open during April 2026. Please carefully read the guidelines on the Submissions page, as these have changed. Submissions will be received only via the submissions form.

Creatrix Haiku

The submission closing date for the next issue of Creatrix Haiku and Poetry Journal is midnight (Perth, Western Australia time) on 10th May for the June issue. Creatrix is a journal of WA Poets Inc.

Please visit the March 2026 issue #72 for a taste of the haiku Creatrix publishes. Scroll down the Submission Guidelines page for details of how to submit haiku and senryu via Submittable, as well as guidance on what the editors look for in haiku and senryu.

Contest Success

Congratulations to the three Australian Runners Up in the Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar Competition 2026: Marietta McGregor, Vanessa Proctor and Rob Scott. Their haiku will appear in the 2027 calendar. Snapshot Press is a leading publisher of haiku and tanka books based in the UK.

Paperbark Haiku Group Report – Autumn 2026

The Paperbark Autumn ginko was held on Wednesday 13^th May at the Perth City Farm, a half hectare site devoted to providing information and education to the people of Perth about the protection and regeneration of the natural environment.

Established on a former industrial site in East Perth, this once polluted site has been rehabilitated by volunteers, and is now a welcoming oasis in the busy city.

Using Permaculture techniques volunteers grow a wide range of vegetables, herbs, plants and trees in lovingly tended beds. Deep litter is used for the chickens to fossick in, accompanied to the crowing of a beautiful cockerel and a splendid smelling compost to revitalise the soil.

A strong contingent of sixteen haiku poets attended the ginko and were able to wander around the garden, pen and paper at the ready looking for those wonderful moments of inspiration, and upon reconvening a little later shared some of their ideas with the others.

Another delightful aspect of the Farm is the children’s playground which on the day we were there was being used by several dozen children and their parents. It is to be hoped that being in such an environment rubs off onto them and they become conscious of what the farm is trying to achieve.

Everyone agreed that our visit to this site was inspirational and we should have another ginko at the farm in the future.

Below are a few haiku submitted by the participants:

standing by the sage
I discovered
it was lavender
Pat Johnson

borage and rosemary
so many herbs amongst
everlastings
Rose van Son

clouds begin looming
autumn winds blow
over the darkening sea
Aileen Hawkes

deep litter
a cockerel
voices approval
Barry Sanbrook

new generation
in the sandpit
a rumble of trucks
Gary De Piazzi

up and down, up and
I’ve forgotten what comes next
another sign of old age
Ruari Jack Hughes

an azure sky
the clouds all in my head
melancholia
Rita Tognini

unclouded autumn sky
understory
insects and worms
Coral Carter

Upcoming Gadigal Ginkō for Sydney poets: Saturday 20th June

The next Gadigal Ginkō will take place on Saturday 20th June, 2026 from 10am. For this winter gathering we will meet at the State Library, which will provide options for both indoor and outdoor ginkō. To join with other Sydney haiku poets for this event, please register via the form on my Gadigal Ginko page. There you’ll find an outline of what’s involved in the ginkō, as well as links to reports of previous ginkō.

Leanne Mumford
Convenor, Gadigal Ginko

Report on the Fringe Myrtles Meeting May, 2026

For our latest meeting, we were treated to a presentation by Grant Caldwell on the principle of fueki ryūkō in the writing of haiku. It was an illuminating presentation that provoked much thought and discussion among the gathered members. Prior to the meeting, Grant circulated some reading material to help prepare the group. Present at the meeting were: Grant Caldwell, Rodney Williams, Anna Fern, Maurice McNamara, Laura DeBernardi, Helen Williams, Liv Saint-James, Bee Tenni, Di Cousens, Thomas Landgraf, Louise Hopewell, Marisa Fazio, Rob Scott.

Grant sees fueki ryūkō — “the unchanging and the ever-changing” — as a central principle of haiku, but not one limited to Japanese culture. While he acknowledges that the term itself is specific to Japanese poetics, and in particular, Bashō’s understanding of haiku, he argues that the underlying idea is universal and can be found across world literature and philosophy. He provided numerous examples of this throughout the meeting.

For Grant, fueki refers to enduring or universal truths, while ryūkō refers to the shifting, immediate particulars of lived experience. In haiku, the poet captures a fleeting moment in such a way that it gestures toward something timeless. Numerous times during the presentation, Caldwell linked this notion to the broader poetic idea that “the universal is contained in the particular,” citing James Joyce, Heraclitus, and Daoist philosophy as parallels to Bashō’s concept.

Grant was at pains to suggest that non-Japanese poets do not need deep knowledge of Japanese language or culture in order to write effective haiku, because the essential spirit of haiku is grounded in universal human observation of nature, time, place, and experience. What matters is an awareness of the underlying poetics — attentiveness, simplicity, and the ability to reveal the universal through ordinary moments. Drawing from Bashō again, he emphasised the importance of ‘plain speaking’ in composing haiku, which helps us to produce work that preserves, as Robert Hass puts it, the “irreducible mysteriousness of the images themselves.”

Ultimately, Caldwell sees fueki ryūkō as a living balance between tradition and renewal. Haiku poets outside Japan should learn from the Japanese masters, but not imitate them mechanically. With a final nod to Bashō, he argues that poets should “seek what the old poets sought” — the revelation of enduring truth within the fleeting moment of everyday life.

Inspired by the presentation and subsequent discussion, which was engrossed as it was varied, Di Cousens penned the following haiku:

Koroit Country –
the stone axe holds its time
below the lava flow

Photo courtesy of Di Cousens.

Submissions for Edition 6 of ‘Catchment – Poetry of Place’ close on 21 May!

Australian poets working in Japanese verse forms are encouraged to offer up to five (5) stand-alone tanka or a string which is four (4) pieces in length.
Up to three (3) free-verse poems would also be welcome, no longer than 30 lines.
Offered through this link, submissions should please be rounded out with a biographical statement of no more than 50 words:
https://www.bawbawartsalliance.org.au/bcms/catchment-submissions/
The work offered should show some sense of place, focussing on location in this country or overseas.
We look forward to receiving your work!

Rodney Williams
Editor
‘Catchment – Poetry of Place’
Baw Baw Arts Alliance
Gunaikurnai Country
West Gippsland, Victoria

Haiku Society of America contests opening 1 June 2026

The submission window for the Haiku Society of America haiku, senryu, and haibun contests will be June 1-30, 2026. The contest is open to the public. First Prize is $200; Second Prize, $150; Third Prize, $100. The winning poems will be published in Frogpond and on the HSA website. All rights revert to authors on publication. More information at https://www.hsa-haiku.org/hsa-contests.htm

Submitted by Sarah Paris, HSA 2nd Vice President

Report on the Bindii Meeting Sunday, April 12, 2026

Julia Wakefield, Lynette Arden and Maeve Archibald met on Sunday, April 12, at 3 pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Stella Damarjati, Radhika de Silva, Maureen Sexton, Subha Goonaratne and Ewan Rourke. The attendees brought some haiku for review, and Radhika and Ewan both sent haiku in spite of their absence.

International Haiku Poetry Day 17 April 2026– Haiku String

Today, 17th April 2026, we are celebrating International Haiku Poetry Day by holding a String on the theme of ‘Connections’. Connecting and sharing seem especially important these days, when peace often feels like a distant dream. By sharing our haiku, we can connect with each other, even in these days of international disruption, warfare and all the consequent turmoil that extends far beyond the zones of conflict. May harmony and peace reign internationally, and hatreds be displaced by cooperation and love. Entries to this haiku string have now closed. Please enjoy the haiku.

Queensland Poets Haiku Reading Event, 22nd April

Join us on Wednesday 22nd April from 7.30pm AEST for a Zoom reading by three experienced haiku poets from Queensland – Duncan Richardson, Jeffrey Harpeng and Vuong Pham. The programme will include a brief presentation from AHS, the planned readings and an ‘open mic’ session. The event is free and open to all interested poets to attend. Please register by 9am AEST on 22nd April to receive the Zoom link. Link for the Registration form.

There is still space in the programme for additional poets. If you are a Queensland haiku poet who would like to read your work at this event, please get in touch right away via the Contact Secretary Form.