Report on the Bindii Meeting, June 1 2025

 Julia Wakefield, Subha Goonaratne, Radhika DeSilva, and Lynette Arden met on Sunday, June 1, at 3:00 p.m. via Zoom. Apologies were received from Maeve Archibald, Ewan Rourke, Udara Thambapanni, Stella Damarjati and Maureen Sexton, who sent us some haiku to use in the session. The rest of us had all brought some haiku on the two themes of technology and birds, as arranged at the previous meeting.

Image by Subha Goonaratne: Lynette Arden, Subha Goonaratne, Julia Wakefield and Radhika DeSilva

Subha gave a very professional presentation outlining the principles of the renga, followed by an introduction to the rengay, which was invented by Gary Gay in 1912. We then completed two rengay, with three people taking part in each of them. Subha remained an encouraging observer. We incorporated Maureen’s haiku in the second rengay, as Radhika had to leave early.

We all agreed that it was a very enjoyable session, enabling us to be a little freer than we usually are with the haiku form. It was an interesting exercise to try reducing some of the three-liners to two-liners, to fit the 3-2-3-2-3-2 pattern.

We also discussed simple ways to form a structure for beginners to follow, as a tool that we could use in our upcoming workshops. One approach is to imagine a scene, as if in a movie, where you set the atmosphere and then introduce movement.

Our next Zoom meeting is scheduled for Sunday, July 6, at 3:30 pm Adelaide time. However, if this time is too late for the Sri Lanka poets, we could consider keeping the 3:00 pm time.

Julia Wakefield

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