Cloudcatchers Summer Ginko #60

Pop Denison Park, Ballina, NSW  
Thursday 28 January 2021

Cloudcatchers gathered for Ginko No. 60 at a lovely little seaside inlet, Shaw’s Bay, in Ballina, just north of the mouth of the Richmond River. Previously the group has celebrated each ‘noughty’ ginko at the site of our first gathering in 2005, at Brunswick Heads, but we have all aged since then. As most of our more senior and stalwart members are now reluctant to make the half hour drive in highway traffic, we ‘stayed home’, and the younger ones came to us.

Still in the search for ‘What makes a good haiku?’ we enjoyed reading snippets to each other from the recent ‘Windfall’, Issue No.9 2021 (edited by Beverley George, published by Peter Macrow of Blue Giraffe Press). We appraised a number of haiku by members, and also those of some highly respected haijin, savouring the process.

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Book Review – breaking my journey

breaking my journey by Gregory Piko

reviewed by Cynthia Rowe

breaking my journey, published by the prestigious Red Moon Press, is delightfully produced. The cover, designed by Ron C. Moss, a digital photograph, is particularly striking. The book is smoothly finished, and a pleasure to hold.

The collection contains ninety-eight individual haiku, two haibun, a rengay and haiku shuffle, wherein Gregory Piko extols the things we take for granted, the essence of what makes us ‘us’. He extracts beauty from the everyday, makes us see the world in a fresh light; that which seems banal on first viewing is elevated to the extraordinary, universal in its appeal.

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Drifting Sands: Aussie Style

The US based online journal, Drifting Sands, has had a particularly Aussie flavour lately with the January Special Feature: Girt by Sea overseen and including the works of poet-photographer Gavin Austin. This collection features pieces by a number of Australian poets. Some of the photographs may take a little while to load because of their high resolution, but they are worth it!

Also the current issue of Drifting Sands: issue 7, with a more international selection, has been guest edited by Marilyn Humbert and can be enjoyed here.

Haiku @ The Oaks, Canberra

Tuesday 12 January 2021

Although summer has started to heat up, a breeze beneath shady trees made for a perfect setting as we gathered at The Oaks to begin another year. All were present — Glenys Ferguson, Marietta McGregor, Kathy Kituai, Hazel Hall, Gregory Piko and Jan Dobb — along with a full attendance of vociferous birds!

Over lunch, Greg produced copies of his recently published book breaking my journey, a joy anticipated by us all. Congratulations and sales came thick and fast, as did some spontaneous haiku readings. A striking cover, designed by Ron Moss, opens to a collection of Greg’s haiku (and variants) in an immediately attractive format — an invitation to enter and muse. Our thanks to Greg for sharing his inspiring work in this way. For more details visit Greg’s website here.

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Bindii Report Zoom meeting, January 2021

On Sunday January 24 six of us again attended a Zoom meeting: Julia Wakefield, Steve Wigg, Maeve Archibald, Stella Damarjati, Lynette Arden and Coral Carter.

We once more attempted a renku, this time led by Steve. We’d previously tried a Winter Junicho renku with Lynette as our Renku master. Steve had extensively studied Carley’s Renku Reckoner over the Christmas break and he challenged us with a twelve verse Summer Junicho.

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Bindii Report Zoom meeting in November

On Sunday November 29 six of us attended another Zoom meeting: Julia Wakefield, Steve Wigg, Maeve Archibald, Stella Damarjati Lynette Arden and Coral Carter.  Coral introduced us to her publishing house Nulla Nulla Press, which publishes WA haiku poets.

We had agreed to try composing some haiku prompted by 4 or 5 concrete nouns, as demonstrated in Hansha Teki’s Bipedal Verses https://heliosparrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/Bipedal_Verses-Hansha_Teki.pdf  so we could compare our different responses to each prompt. At the same time we looked at the ‘parallel verse’ approach that Hansha Teki demonstrated.

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