Haiku Bindii

  Julia Wakefield, Maureen Sexton, Ewan Rourke and Maeve Archibald met on Sunday September 28 at 4 pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Lynette Arden, Stella Damarjati and Radhika de Silva. The attendees brought some haiku for review and Radhika sent her haiku in spite of her absence. Maeve reported that one of her poems (not haiku) had been featured in a Friendly Street publication. Ewan reported that one of his haiku had won a competition run by My Haiku Pond https://www.facebook.com/MyHaikuPond. We had been asked to bring haiku with a coastal theme, with or without a reference to the algal bloom that has recently brought so much devastation to the marine life in the St Vincent and Spencer Gulfs. We reviewed everyone’s haiku, then proceeded to group them into two sequences. Everyone was happy to alter or even delete a line from their haiku in order to help the flow of the sequence. It was an enjoyable, if slightly humbling, experience to share our opinions about how a...

  Julia Wakefield, Lynette Arden, Ewan Rourke and Maeve Archibald met on Sunday, September 28, at 4 pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Maureen Sexton, Subha Goonaratne, Stella Damarjati and Radhika de Silva. The attendees brought some haiku for review, and Subha sent her haiku in spite of her absence. Maeve reported on the poetry event she had been invited to present at, at the Poetry Lab, where she discussed haiku forms, focusing on Basho and Issa, and compared their work with that of modern English-language haiku poets. Ewan reported on his mentorship with Rob Scott, remarking that it has been extremely valuable so far. He described how Rob encouraged him to do much more self-editing and to move away from a cerebral approach to something more immediate. We all commented that his current haiku are definitely improving in this regard. We looked at all our haiku with the ‘immediate’ approach in mind, and this helped us to understand how to improve them. We also discu...

Julia Wakefield, Subha Goonaratne, Stella Damarjati, Maeve Archibald, Ewan Rourke and Lynette Arden met on Sunday September 28 at 4.30pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Maureen Sexton. The attendees all brought some haiku for review, some of which were on the theme of spring, as suggested previously. Maeve mentioned an upcoming poetry event she had been invited to present at, at the Poetry Lab, where she planned to discuss haiku forms, focusing on Basho and Issa, with plans to include an Australian haiku artist for comparison. Lynette reported on the Haiku Musings discussion on the Australian Haiku Society website, expressing concern about low participation and suggesting an open discussion format might encourage more contributions. Ewan shared his success in being selected for a haiku mentoring program with Rob Scott, which will consist of weekly Zoom sessions until the end of the year, providing opportunities for in-depth haiku discussions. We discussed the use of perso...

  Julia Wakefield, Subha Goonaratne, Radhika DeSilva, Udara Thambapanni, Stella Damarjati and Lynette Arden met on Saturday July 12 at 3.30pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Maeve Archibald, Ewan Rourke and Maureen Sexton. The attendees all brought some haiku on the two themes of winter and water, as arranged previously. Subha reported on her beginners’ haiku workshop, which was outstandingly successful. She presented it in Sydney in partnership with Leanne Mumford, and they had over 20 attendees. Subha mentioned that she felt the large number of participants was directly due to advertising on social media as well as putting flyers in local libraries, and she was delighted to see that the students consisted of all age groups and many different ethnic backgrounds. She will try to encourage some of the students to join our Zoom group. Lyn also suggested that she direct them to our Haiku Bindii blogspot https://haiku-bindii.blogspot.com to get some idea of what we do. Lyn...

  Julia Wakefield, Subha Goonaratne, Radhika DeSilva, and Lynette Arden met on Sunday, June 1, at 3:00 p.m. via Zoom. Apologies were received from Maeve Archibald, Ewan Rourke, Udara Thambapanni, Stella Damarjati and Maureen Sexton, who sent us some haiku to use in the session. The rest of us had all brought some haiku on the two themes of technology and birds, as arranged at the previous meeting. Image by Subha Goonaratne: Lynette Arden, Subha Goonaratne, Julia Wakefield and Radhika DeSilva Subha gave a very professional presentation outlining the principles of the renga, followed by an introduction to the rengay, which was invented by Gary Gay in 1912. We then completed two rengay, with three people taking part in each of them. Subha remained an encouraging observer. We incorporated Maureen’s haiku in the second rengay, as Radhika had to leave early. We all agreed that it was a very enjoyable session, enabling us to be a little freer than we usually are with the haiku form. It wa...

  Report on the Bindii Meeting April 26 2025 Julia Wakefield, Maeve Archibald, Subha Goonaratne, and Lynette Arden met on Saturday April 26 at 3pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Maureen Sexton, Ewan Rourke, Stella Damarjati and Maureen Watson. We began with sharing news of members’ successes. Maeve mentioned that Friendly Street Poets are becoming more receptive to publishing haiku in their anthologies, and she has had several poems including haiku published in their 50 th anniversary publication. We then discussed ways we are finding to bring haiku to the attention of the general public. Subha is planning a youth workshop in Sydney, with support from Leanne. Maeve is giving a poetry workshop at Sophia Adelaide https://sophia.org.au in the near future, which will feature a section on haiku. Julia is running a haiku workshop at Norton Summit on June 19, as part of the Adelaide Hills Winter Words Festival. We then workshopped our haiku. Julia mentioned the concepts ...