Haiku Bindii

Present: Lynette Arden, Stella Damarjati, Steve Wigg, Julia Wakefield. We discussed tanka, as planned from the previous meeting. Stella showed us some that she had prepared, including one that had been accepted for Eucalypt, and Lynn showed us some tanka that she had previously published. We also looked at tanka by Julie Thorndyke. We agreed that tanka are most often successful when they form a complete sentence, and the last two lines don’t have to be longer in order for the tanka to work – even one word in a line is acceptable. We tried doing a five-minute brainstorm, writing sentences on the topic of ‘fear’ and trying to turn them into tanka. An abstract term is a better theme for a tanka than a concrete one such as ‘water’, which is more suitable for a haiku. The results were surprisingly effective. It seems that if we pick on a deeply personal interpretation of a theme, the sentences start to flow. It was in many ways a refreshing approach compared to the discipline of haiku

Present: Lynette Arden, Stella Damarjati, Steve Wigg, Julia Wakefield. Apologies: Maeve Archibald. The meeting had been postponed form August 9, as not all of us could attend. We are getting quite good at running Zoom meetings, but we all forgot what the topic was this time – it was supposed to be water! Julia thought it was winter, so some of us submitted some winter haiku, and Lyn showed us some of her senryu, which alluded to Adelaide-related themes from the past. Perhaps we’ll look at water next time, as it has a great deal of metaphorical potential. Julia did a short analysis of Gregory Piko’s featured haiku from the Haiku Oz website, in which rainfall could be taken as a metaphor. grandpa’s window we touch raindrops from the other side Lyn made the point at this meeting that the metaphor has to be part of the scene, not something imagined and imposed on the scene. Julia realised that she still over elaborates her haiku! It’s very easy to add too many ideas or ex