The Red Dragonflies’ summer (and Christmas) meeting was held on Saturday 12th December at Pearl Beach Cafe, Pearl Beach, where members enjoyed a delicious lunch before workshopping their haiku over coffee. One of the prepared exercises had been to write a haiku about a childhood memory of Christmas. The haiku presented were testimony to the fact that memory can serve equally as well as observation in producing seemingly immediate haiku. Members agreed that, as Australians, it does seem a lot easier to write evocatively about the heat of summer than it does about winter’s cold… Despite the day being a glorious summer one, members were cooled by strong easterly breezes through the cafe’s open windows, which inspired the following ‘moment’:

sea breezes sweep the cafe –
we hold on to our haiku

Lunch was followed by a ginko on the foreshore, from which convenor, Vanessa Proctor, is hoping to produce a booklet. In this way, members will relive what was a most stimulating, enjoyable and, as always, convivial occasion.

Lesley Walter

Posted by Beverley George at 09:26 AM | Permalink

On behalf of everyuone at haiku Oz I would like to congratulate Cynthia Rowe for receiving a highly commended in the 2009 IHS International Haiku Competition.

A full listing of results is below:

The Irish Haiku Society is proud to announce the results of the second IHS International Haiku Competition. This year we saw a significant increase in the number of participating authors. 218 haiku by poets from thirteen countries ( Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Poland, Portugal and Romania) were submitted to this year’s competition. Many of the submitted poems were from the island of Ireland. This year’s competition was adjudicated by Anthony "Anatoly" Kudryavitsky, and it was judged blindly. The following is the list of prize-winning and highly commended haiku.

1st Prize

Mary O'Keefe (Ireland)

November sunset
a galaxy of crows
quench the twilight

2nd Prize

receding surf...
for every clamshell
a sandy wake

3rd Prize

John Barlow (UK)

some in, some out
of the ebbing tide...
the morning oystercatchers

----------------------

Highly Commended Haiku

In alphabetical order:

Ernest J. Berry (New Zealand)

September wind
a better view
of compost bins

Clare McCotter (Northern Ireland)

stooping on the edge
of autumn
purple river grass

Roland Packer (Canada)

country fair
cornsilk at the feet
of the hucksters

Cynthia Rowe (Australia)

spring equinox
two pines leaning
into each other

Andre Surridge (New Zealand)

end of a stalk
the caterpillar climbs
a ladder of air

Ian Turner (UK)

sun fringed clouds
a carrion crow struts
from sleeper to sleeper

Andrena Yeats (UK)

horses stand in morning frost
one apart stares
at the space between

Posted by Graham Nunn at 10:10 PM | Permalink

Report of Meeting of Bindii (formerly SA Haiku Group) 7 November 2009-11-07

The meeting was held at the Box Factory in Regent St South, Adelaide.

Present: Lynette Arden, Maeve Archibald, Belinda Broughton, Margaret Fensom,
Marilyn Linn, Elsa and Alain Rozanes, Alex Ask, Athena Zaknic.

We held a kukai. Each member brought 3 haiku or found 3 haiku in books. We
circulated the haiku anonymously and each member read out favourites. There
were many haiku to appreciate and the experience was most enjoyable. We plan
to use this format again, along with other activities. Following the kukai
we had lunch while workshopping haiku and tanka brought by various members.

Lynette Arden

Posted by Graham Nunn at 05:59 PM | Permalink

Issue #3 of 'Notes From the Gean' is now online. We welcome your submissions of haiku, tanka and haiga. Submissions for Isue #4 are now open and will remain open until the January 15th deadline.

Lorin Ford,
for 'Notes From the Gean', a quarterly haikai journal.
www.geantree.com

Posted by Graham Nunn at 05:53 PM | Permalink