Haiku Bindii

Report on Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group meeting: 4 August 2018 Present: Lynette Arden, Julia Wakefield, Sara Abend-Sims, Margaret Fensom, Dawn Colsey, Maeve Archibald, Roger Higgins. Apologies: Lee Bentley, Marilyn Linn Haiku Workshop: Haiku: Beyond the Basics Lynette Arden presented some ideas to extend us beyond the usual guidelines provided for writing haiku in English. Japanese thought: wabi sabi – 1.     how it originated 2.     concepts used in haiku Terms such as yugen and karumi ( karumi as discussed by Susumu Tachiguchi (in World Haiku Review) Martin Lucas in his essay Haiku as poetic spell : argues that haiku in the West has concentrated too much on content and must also look to the poetic element of haiku, as in the value of words and how they are used.

The meeting for August 2018 will start with an examination of some aspects of haiku beyond what people commonly consider the 'rules of haiku composition'. Lynette Arden will bring some material to hand out.  Please bring some haiku examples to share and discuss. Sharing and workshop of members' Japanese genre poetry will follow the discussion. The meeting in the Box Factory will start at 12.30 and finish at 2.30.

Members met at the Box Factory for our meeting on 2 June, with Maeve Archibald as our workshop presenter. The meeting consisted of a series of exercises designed to stimulate ideas for writing haibun. Maeve presented each exercise and the participants wrote, and then read what they had written. We hope, of course, that this will result in some worthwhile haibun being developed after the meeting. So that other groups can share the workshop ideas, we have added them below this report.

At our 2 June meeting Maeve Archibald will give prompts for writing. This promises to be a most stimulating meeting for members. We will start at the usual time of 12.30 at our usual venue, The Box Factory.

Our April meeting at the Box Factory was a workshop of members’ Japanese genre poetry written in response to the challenge set last meeting of writing about animals. Other subject matter was also workshopped.   There was a vigorous discussion of the work presented, mostly haiku, with a sprinkling of tanka/kyoka. We also explored more general principles of writing haiku. We were pleased to welcome Jeremy Ng to his first attendance at the group.

This meeting, to be held in our usual venue of the Box Factory, will focus on  'animal' haiku, tanka, haibun etc. etc. It will be a general workshop of members' work. Work on other subjects will also be workshopped, as usual. More details will be sent by Lee Bentley closer to the time. Enquiries to our email address haikubindii@gmail.com

For the first meeting of Bindii for 2018, Julia Wakefield and Sara Sims prepared a workshop on tanka. Present: Maeve Archibald, Lynette Arden, Margaret Fensom, Sara Abend-Sims, Marilyn Linn, Athena Zaknic, Julia Wakefield and Sue Heinemann. Apologies: Dawn Colsey, Lee Bentley, Belinda Broughton, and Annie Fox. Workshop: Julia distributed written information on the basic principles of writing tanka and went through the points with the group. Some examples of tanka were then read and discussed. Sara then provided several tanka writing stimulants to the members, and we were invited to write and share our results.