Report for Bindii meeting, September 12 2021.

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 extra words, for the sake of being ‘clever’.

We went on to discuss tanka and agreed to try producing some for the next meeting. Tanka are more subjective than haiku. They usually comprise a whole sentence, and there is no necessity to stick rigidly to the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern, but there should be a pivot point in the third or fourth line. The first three lines shouldn’t work on their own as a haiku.

We have agreed to meet again on October 31 at 3pm.

 

Julia Wakefield