Haiku Bindii

Steve Wigg, Julia Wakefield, Stella Damarjati, Lynette Arden, Jake Dennis and Ewan Rourke joined the Google Meet meeting, and apologies were received from Subha Goonaratne, Maureen Sexton and Kirsten Johnston. Most people sent their haiku in advance, which made it easier for us to critique them.             We workshopped our haiku and then arranged to have our next meeting on Sunday April 14 at 3pm, before the AHS meeting that takes place on International Haiku Poetry Day on April 17.             There was general agreement that the ‘nature poem’ can be satisfying on its own without an obvious reference to the human condition, but our use of words to describe a natural scene can often evoke human associations. The less we directly refer to an emotional state, the more room there is for the reader to imagine a parallel human situation. We didn’t discuss the concept of ‘ma’ at the meeting, but the most successful haiku often seem to imply this ‘negative space’ in the same way that

We had a Google Meet meeting for the first time. Steve Wigg, Julia Wakefield, Stella Damarjati, Maeve Archibald, Subha Goonaratne, Maureen Sexton and Lynette Arden were joined by three new members: Kirsten Johnson, Jake Dennis and Ewan Rourke. Jake lives in WA as does Maureen, and Subha is based in Sydney, so Google Meet is a very handy way of bringing our group together. We all agreed it works just as well as Zoom.             Everyone brought some haiku for critique, and established members were very impressed with the standard of haiku submitted by our new members. A lively discussion began, focusing on the importance of reducing a haiku to one idea that can be interpreted in different ways according to each individual’s POV, rather than invoking a collection of ideas that pull the reader in too many directions at once. It’s always fascinating to see how many different responses a group of readers can have to one simple haiku.             We are excited that the group has now ex