Bindii Report: Zoom meeting in May

On Saturday June 27 we held another Zoom meeting. Four of us attended: Julia Wakefield, Steve Wigg, Stella Damarjati and Lynette Arden, with apologies from Dawn Colsey and Maeve Archibald.  
We had arranged at the previous meeting to try putting together a sequence, using the theme of ‘sound’. Each member was required to bring along between three and five haiku that they had written on this theme.

We were agreeably surprised at the results. Although some of us had deliberately written haiku for the session, it soon became apparent that we could add haiku that we had written without the theme in mind, but which nevertheless implied sound or silence. As we took turns, we all managed to find a haiku that related to the previous haiku, and Stella astonished us all by producing some new haiku on the spot that neatly connected the sequence.
After almost an hour of adding haiku to the sequence, we pared a few away that didn’t quite work and then shifted the order until we all felt we had a satisfying flow. The result was a 16 verse poem that references our current situation – living under the shadow of Covid 19 – but it ends, literally, on an optimistic note.
We have agreed to wait until we have submitted our individual haiku to publications before we consider publishing the sequence as a group creation.
We will hold the next meeting on Sunday August 30 at 4pm. We hope that other members will be able to join us so that we can compose another sequence, or even two or three. The theme will be Colour and Light – bearing in mind that we can use metaphor to expand the idea in many directions. Everyone is asked to bring three or more haiku that fit the theme, and if you dare - be prepared to improvise on the spot!

                                                                                                                                       Julia Wakefield

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