Category: Tanka in Australia

Update on Australian Tanka Groups: November, 2011

There is an increasing number of very active Tanka Groups around Australia. The following summary of their activities was recently provided to the Bowerbird Group.

The Tanka Groups:
Bowerbird Tanka Group (Pearl Beach, NSW)
Breathstream Tanka Poets (Geelong, Victoria)
Bottlebrush Tanka Group (North Sydney, NSW)
Tanka Huddle (North Rocks, Sydney, NSW)
Moonrise, a group within a group (St Leonards, NSW)
The Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group (Adelaide, SA)
Limestone Tanka Poets (Canberra, ACT)

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In Conversation with Two Poets, Mariko Kitakubo and Beverley George

— a special Limestone Tanka Poets event, 13th August 2011.

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.

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Limestone Tanka Poets, 22nd May, 2011 meeting

The fact that there was little business to discuss other than the positive advantages of keeping an Awards and Publication book for Limestone Tanka Poets next meeting onwards (contents to be published in ACT Writers etc. as another means of ‘outing’ tanka in Canberra), June Foster, Kate King, John Van De Graaff, Gerry Jacobson, Michael Thorley and I, did not mind at all. We were about to embark on a Japanese way of responding to tanka in a workshop by Amelia Fielden, who assured of a method that was both gentle and informative.

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Tanka Huddle Chapbook

The Tanka Huddle critique group has published a chapbook of selected poems, simply entitled Tanka Huddle. This is a fantastic opportunity to read a sampling of modern tanka by Australian poets Anne Benjamin, Shona Bridge, Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti , Jan Foster, Beverley George, Yvonne Hales, Anne Howard , Carmel Summers, David Terelinck, and Julie Thorndyke.

A limited number of chapbooks are available for purchase. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, please send $7 (from within Australia) or $10 (from overseas) to: J. Thorndyke, 3 Forest Knoll, Castle Hill, 2154 NSW Australia [price includes postage and handling].

Please email enquiries to j.thorndyke@bigpond.com

Julie Thorndyke

Limestone Tanka Poets, 17th April 2011 meeting

The smell of gums in car park and wet-earth aroma rising from ferns under the bridge you cross as your make your way towards Hudson Cafe, where an intimate group of four Limestone Tanka Poets are to meet over coffee. It’s autumn, the trees dazzle in their Jacob clothing and what could be better than to write on location this time of the year, in the Canberra Botanical Gardens.

Facilitator, Kathy Kituai reports

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