Present: Marilyn Linn, Lesley Charlesworth, Alex Ask, Veronica Shanks, Athena Zaknic, Lynette Arden, Belinda Broughton, Margaret Fensom, Helen Pryor, Jill Gower.

Apologies: Pam Brow, Maeve Archibald, Robin Sinclair, Margaret Rawlinson.

General Business:
Alex Ask Treasurer took charge of the group funds of $70. Current email lists have been sent to Alex Ask, Maeve Archibald and Belinda Broughton. With my computer difficulties this is a good safeguard and helpful to the running of the group. Thank you to these people. We run as a cooperative group and welcome contributions of help from members.

Donation to Box factory facilities: Maeve Archibald bought and presented to the Box Factory Community our gift of a biscuit tin and serving bowls.

FORTHCOMING MEETINGS:
5 March Meeting, 19 March and 2 April meeting: Maeve Archibald has prepared a workshop on writing haibun (prose plus haiku). Members will need to register to attend.
7 May meeting: Alex Ask has agreed to run the meeting.

TANKA WORKSHOP: Lyn Arden conducted a workshop on writing tanka. The workshop briefly covered some of the history of the form in Japanese literature, with examples of Japanese tanka, both early and modern read to the group. This was followed by reading of tanka in English and some discussion of the usual ways of writing tanka, both in English and Japanese.
As part of the workshop, we had brief exercises in ‘show and tell’ and some discussion of how to show by using metaphor and placing images side by side for the reader to interpret. We then had a couple of exercises writing tan renga as an introduction to the construction of a tanka. Tan renga consist of two sections of three and two lines written by two people.

Lynette Arden 5 February 2011