Haiku Bindii

Our last meeting for 2015 will be held at the Box Factory on Saturday 5 December from 12 noon to 2 pm. Please bring your work to share. The meeting will adjourn a little earlier than usual for an end of year celebration at a nearby café Members will be informed of further details by email. For any enquiries please email our contact: contact bindii

On Saturday 3 October, a beautiful sunshiny day, although a little warmer than expected, seven members of Bindii group left the Box Factory at noon to take the brief walk through back streets to Himeji Gardens.  Lee Bentley, the group leader for the ginko, advised members to scatter through the garden and meet at the entrance half an hour later. The temperature was noticeably cooler in the gardens, with the water and greenery no doubt helping to keep the temperature down. Members strolled, taking notes and photos, or perched on rocks or seats to take in the peace and quiet.  Even though other visitors were there, people seemed to appreciate that this was a place for quiet contemplation. We then returned to the Box Factory for lunch and a workshop of the many haiku that had been written on the ginko. The last meeting for 2015 will be held at the Box Factory on Saturday 5 December from 12 noon to 2 pm. 

Bindii Japanese Genres Poetry Group sponsored the four prizes awarded in this first year of the haiku competition. Ten schools from around South Australia participated. Fourteen teachers used the curriculum material provided by Bindii to the Langhorne Creek Festival organizers to teach haiku.  With an average class size of thirty, around 420 students were taught haiku by the Langhorne Creek Writers’ Festival. In each school the three best haiku from each grade category were entered. There were 26 entries. In addition to the four First Prize Winners, there were 10 commended poems. In their report the judges (Lynette Arden and Lee Bentley from Bindii) commented: ‘the winning haiku in each of the categories were chosen because they have strong clear images with emotional impact and good haiku structure with two distinct parts to each poem. Among the other entries it was pleasing to see that the students have really looked at using concrete imagery in their haiku.’ At the award ...

The next meeting will be a ginko (haiku walk) in the Himeji Gardens on Saturday 3 October, led by Lee Bentley. We will meet at The Box Factory at 12 noon and leave from there to walk to the gardens. If it is pouring with rain, the whole meeting will be held at The Box Factory.

The 1 August meeting of the Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group was held at the Box Factory, Adelaide, from 12 noon to 2 pm. Eight members attended and there were three apologies. General Business: 1.      Patricia Prime has posted a review of Willow Light on the HaikuOz website. 2.     Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group has sponsored prizes for haiku written by schoolchildren for the Langhorne Creek young people’s writing competition . 3.     Program for the remainder of 2015: Saturday 3 October: a ginko (haiku walk) in Himeji Gardens led by Lee Bentley. We will meet at the Box Factory at 12 noon and then walk to the gardens (5 mins walk). The hoped for outcome might include a group of associated haiku that we could publish. If the weather is inclement, we will hold the whole meeting at the Box Factory. For those unfamiliar with the term, on a ginko the participants stroll around, making notes, writing haiku or tanka,...

Copies of   Haiku Bindii Vol.2 Willow Light, the second issue of our Journal Haiku Bindii, are now available for sale.  Details on our Haiku Bindii web page. Willow Light Review by Patricia Prime

Nine members and guests met at the Box Factory at 12 noon for Karin Anderson’s talk on early love tanka, from as far back as ninth century Ise Monogatari. Karin then discussed kyoka, the humorous equivalent of the tanka form, also with examples. Some examples were modern compositions published on the Prune Juice website. https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/ Karin also prepared an informative handout for members.  Our thanks to Karin for her well researched and well delivered presentation. Lyn Arden presented some material on the early forms of katauta, sedoka and mondo, also with examples from current literature. After the presentation, group members workshopped their Japanese genre poetry, mainly haiku and tanka. Group Meeting Program for the remainder of 2015: 1 August: Lyn Arden: How to write haiku  ̶  common techniques. This will be a workshop meeting where we will look at techniques, discuss them and try some of them out. Contrary to popular belief, the...