There has to be good reason when the temperature is 24 degrees in Canberra to stay indoors, and Gerry Jacobson’s How-a-Poet-Works session was more than enough motivation for Limestone Tanka Poets to gather at the Writer’s Center, Sunday 30th October for our monthly meeting.
Continue reading “Limestone Tanka poets: report on 30 October meeting”
The Red Dragonflies met at Vanessa Proctor’s home in Pymble on Saturday 15th October. Dawn Bruce gave a short talk on haiga, and set the group a challenging and instructive exercise. Members had also been invited to bring along photos of their own which might be turned into haiga, so some little time was spent working with these. We were then encouraged to bring some of our own haiga to the Christmas get-together in November. The haiku workshopped at the meeting was, for the most part, met with resounding approval, so the few hours spent together literally flitted by, just like a dragonfly.
Lesley Walter
A strip of land between sea and fresh water is a magical place. Cloudcatchers assembled for their Spring Ginko at Lake Ainsworth, Lennox Head, on Thursday 13 October 2011, savouring the salt spray from the ocean, which mingled with soft breezes from the banksias and tea-trees lining this tea-coloured lake.
Quiet contemplation allowed an immersion in the ambience of the abundant bird life, with its various rhythms of song, the soft peeling bark of the melaleucas, the gentle lapping of ripples on sandy banks, and a regular resident who was feeding the water dragons from his mechanised chair. Images were scribbled into notebooks during the meditative hour, which seemed to pass too quickly. Hastily constructed first-draft haiku were read around the picnic table, and now some of these, which have been reviewed and refined are being circulated among participants during a Round Robin workshop.
A summer ginko is planned for the first week after school returns in January 2012. If you would like more information, please get in touch with Quendryth Young at: quendrythyoung@bigpond.com.
Quendryth Young
Cloudcatchers Coordinator
It was easy to understand why fifty paying guests followed the trail of balloons leading to The Gods @ Hedley Bull café at the Australian National University last Saturday at noon, 13th August, once Mariko Kitakubo rang temple bells and commenced her reading of her selected tanka in Japanese from ‘Footsteps of Basho Tour’ in collaboration with Beverley George, who read English translations by Amelia Fielden.
Continue reading “In Conversation with Two Poets, Mariko Kitakubo and Beverley George”
In 2009, members of the Australian Haiku Society were greatly moved by the suffering of those affected by the terrible bushfires in Victoria, Australia. Beverley George, then President of the Society, wrote at the time:
“I feel certain I speak on behalf of everyone who comes to this web-site, when I send our deepest regrets to those who have suffered most in these tragic fires in Victoria: the people who have lost the people they love, their homes, their neighbourhood, their way of life, their landscape and livestock, and their pets.
May each of you, victim or helper, who has witnessed the loss of human and animal life, and of habitat, under merciless and unexpected circumstance, be granted healing in due course.
Special thoughts to those people, rendered powerless, who still wait to hear the fate of loved ones. Our hearts are with you.”
While all Australians struggled for words to convey their dismay at the suffering caused by the devastating bushfires, many poets tried to share their feelings in haiku which were posted on the HaikuOz web site as a tribute to the victims of the bushfires. Those haiku are recorded below:
We met at Veale Gardens on South Terrace at the Wisteria Arbour at 11 am. The weather had been showery for a few days, but we were fortunate on the day of the ginko to have fine weather, with only a slight sprinkle of rain just as we were finishing lunch.
Continue reading “Bindii Ginko at Veale Gardens 1 October 2011”
Jan had a special relationship with Wollumbin/Mount Warning which dominates the Northern Rivers landscape of NSW, the country in which Jan was born and spent most of her life. Her connection to the mountain was profound. In feisty middle age Jan drew herself as the mountain. Mountain as naked woman. Her sketch and accompanying haiku appeared in the first (summer 1994) edition of paper wasp of which Jan was a foundation member and editor.
Late in life, when Jan moved from her beloved Dungay farm, she chose her last home with care. She could not, she explained, live anywhere where she could not see ‘her’ mountain. As with the first people of this land, Jan believed that the mountain was not only her totem, it was her strength and source of energy. I never look at Wollumbin without thinking of Jan.
towering
above the dark earth
Wollumbin’s dawn light
Jacqui Murray
Over the past 15 years I was privileged to work with Janice on many haiku activities including the international promotion of her work. As a tribute I offer this summary paragraph taken from my nomination of her in 2003 for the Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Prize.
Australian Haiku Society 