Bindii Meeting of 4 February 2017

After the haiku workshop by Julia Wakefield on 28 January, our February meeting was a follow up haiku workshop, again led by Julia.
 

There were five members present: Julia Wakefield, Lee Bentley, Lynette Arden, Susan O’Brien and Lindy Warrell.

The meeting commenced with a round of introductions by members. We had two new members attending and it was good to get to know something about their writing aims and experience, as well as some of their other interests.

Julia distributed examples of haiku by both modern writers and ancient. We read these carefully and talked about our favourites and what they meant to us. It was interesting to get entirely different interpretations of the same haiku, in some instances. It was also interesting to notice that most of the favourites selected by one member were also appreciated by the others in the group, with the occasional definite disagreement.

We then looked at translations of 18 of Matsuo Basho’s haiku and thought about the techniques he had used to compose them, referring to a list of commonly used techniques.

In the last section of the meeting members wrote some of their haiku on the whiteboard for commentary and discussion. Many ideas were raised in the discussion that were not only specific to each haiku, but related to haiku composition in general.

Our next meeting is planned to be a ginko at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens on Saturday 1 April. We will retain our Box Factory booking in case the weather is inclement on the day. Lee Bentley will email members further details of the ginko.

Following the ginko Lynette Arden will coordinate an email workshop for those members who choose to take part.

 

Lynette Arden

Co-Convener Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group