Haiku Bindii

Lyn, Steve, Stella and Julia met (Maeve sent her apologies) to discuss the Haiku Down Under online conference, which some of us attended. Those who got to it said it was very worthwhile. Those who couldn’t get there were able to download some pdfs, which proved useful discussion points. Of particular interest was the session on wabi sabi, ‘Joy in the Ordinary’, by Marietta McGregor. Steve has said he would like to give a presentation on this topic at a future meeting, and Lyn also would be interested in contributing. The presentation, ‘Haiku on Steroids’ by Michael Dylan Welch provoked further discussion. We analysed some of our recent haiku according to whether they were breaking the rules or not, and whether it mattered. We then agreed to attempt some haiku using one or more of the radical approaches suggested by Welch, for reviewing at the next meeting. We are also intending to try a spontaneous haiku writing session on the day, using a ‘Haiku on Steroids’ approach. In addition, the

Lyn, Julia, Stella and Maeve (Steve sent  an apology) all reviewed each other's haiku and concluded that rather than create a string, we would each work on our own themes and produce individual sequences, which we could send to each other by email and/or discuss at the next meeting. The next meeting was scheduled for after the Haiku Down Under conference https://sites.google.com/view/haikudownunder/home We agreed to discuss what we derived from it, as well as bringing our own recent work, whether it be haiku, haiku sequence, tanka, haibun etc. Lyn reminded us that a good source of haibun - and a place to send them - is Drifting Sands:  https://drifting-sands-haibun.org/ We set a tentative date for the next meeting: October 15, 3pm.   Julia Wakefield