Category: Red Dragonflies

Red Dragonflies spring meeting

The Red Dragonflies held their spring meeting on Saturday 31st August ― a very summery last day of winter! ― so we seem to have rolled three seasons into one on this particular occasion.

Cynthia Rowe’s home in Woollahra provided the venue, and Cynthia was the very generous (as usual) host. Apart from members each bringing along a favourite spring haiku, the pre-set exercises were not, in fact, spring-related. Instead, members had been set quite a challenge: to compose haiku on the topics of seats or chairs, a family heirloom, and lastly, fossils! Indeed, ‘fossils’ presented a particular challenge, yet none of us succumbed to writing of our partners in those terms… In short, members succeeded in avoiding cliches, and most of our ‘offerings’ received unanimous ticks of approval from the group.

Lesley Walter

Red Dragonflies’ Winter Meeting 2013

The Red Dragonflies met on Saturday 13th July at Dawn Bruce’s home in St Leonards. Vanessa Proctor led members Dawn Bruce and Cynthia Rowe. Lesley Walter, Barbara Fisher and Beverley George were unable, regrettably, to attend and sent their apologies.

It was a productive afternoon and the exercises were challenging. We workshopped haiku about puzzles, moments of grace we had experienced, various aspects of loss and, as the day marked the 69th birthday of Erno Rubik, even cubist cats! It was an enjoyable and, as always, convivial meeting.

Cynthia Rowe
President, HaikuOz

Red Dragonflies Autumn Meeting

The Red Dragonflies (minus their leader, Vanessa Proctor, regrettably) met on Saturday 23rd February at Cynthia Rowe’s home in Woollahra. Vanessa had preset members three interesting topics for their prepared haiku ― namely ‘books’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘natural disasters’.

These topics had produced a refreshingly novel collection of haiku. After lunch, the haiku bowl from which each member’s two additional (and anonymous) haiku were drawn and discussed produced their usual share of mirth. Given that, in Japanese, ‘hai’ means ‘amusement’ and ‘ku’ means ‘verse’, the blend of seriousness and levity that is always part of the Red Dragonflies’ meetings is obviously highly appropriate.

Lesley Walter

Red Dragonflies’ Spring Meeting

We kicked off our Red Dragonflies’ meeting on Saturday 8th September with a visit to the Sphinx at Bobbin Head, a memorial carved out of natural sandstone by an ailing ex-soldier, William Shirley, as a tribute to his fallen AIF comrades. We then retired to Vanessa Proctor’s home in Pymble, where we spent a wonderfully creative afternoon composing a Junicho renku entitled “Unexpected Rain”.

A drop of champagne added to this very festive group activity, and we have just received the very good news that our renku is to be published in the December issue of A Hundred Gourds! An afternoon of creativity, composition, and congenial companionship was already more than reward enough, so news of an impending publication is truly icing on the cake!
Lesley Walter

Red Dragonflies – Winter Meeting 2012

On Saturday 28th July the Red Dragonflies met at Lesley Walter’s home for a very enjoyable and entertaining meeting which was fuelled by Lesley’s delicious chocolate cake with cream and berries. All six members were present.

We discussed haiku we’d written as a result of the preset exercises. Our haiku were on the subject of pens, birds and wool, the latter generating much discussion on sheep and shearing practises and led some of us to reminisce about our farming days. We also workshopped haiku anonymously and discussed context in haiku as well as how far it is possible to push ‘rules’ and expectations of haiku. We resolved to have a renku party at our next meeting in September.

Vanessa Proctor

Red Dragonflies’ Autumn Meeting

The six members of the Red Dragonflies haiku group met at Dawn Bruce’s home on Saturday 25th February in glorious sunshine for our first meeting of the year.

We workshopped and shared haiku about global warming and the unseasonal weather which has settled over Sydney for the past few months. We also did an exercise using the colour blue, which resulted in some surprising and exceptional haiku. There was the usual laughter and happy companionship and it was really brought home to us just how subjective our responses to haiku can be, as group members’ opinions about several of the haiku presented varied greatly.

Vanessa Proctor

Red Dragonflies’ Summer Meeting

A ginko had been on the agenda for the Red Dragonflies’ meeting at Pearl Beach on Saturday 26th November, however, inclement weather put a decided stop to that plan. The weather being assuredly for ducks rather than dragonflies, we met, instead, at Beverley George’s home, where we workshopped our pre-written haiku before the skies fortuitously cleared and we managed to flit around Beverley’s home and garden in quasi-ginko fashion. By the time we arrived at the beachside café for lunch, the day had turned quite summery. Our spirits more than matched the sunny afternoon. All in all, a thoroughly uplifting occasion.

after the rain
the laughter of kookaburras
suddenly joins ours

Lesley Walter

Red Dragonflies Meeting: 15th October 2011

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