There were seven members present at the November meeting in The Box Factory, Adelaide for our November workshop led by Maeve Archibald. Eight other members sent apologies.
General business: Beverley George’s latest Children’s book was passed around to members. Members talked briefly about changed meeting arrangements next year (2014).
We have booked for sessions running from 1-3 pm at the Box Factory on the first Saturday of the following months: February, April, June, August, October, and December.
Athena proposed that the group go for coffee to a nearby café after the formal meetings in 2014 and this was considered favourably by members present. This would be an informal arrangement by those present at each session. It was considered that such social interaction would help members get to know one another a bit better.

Ron Moss (well-known Tasmanian haiga poet) and Linda Galloway (tanka poet from Los Angeles). We have booked the Box Factory large room and kitchen for the day from 11 am on Sunday March 30 as Ron and Linda have approached us wishing to put on an audio visual performance and some workshops. The performance (after the workshops) would be free, but the workshops would be paid workshops. As yet we have no further information.

Maeve Archibald will run the first session for 2014 on Saturday 1 February. This will be a follow up session on writing haibun. Maeve intends to workshop haibun written by members following today’s session.

We discussed the idea of members making short presentations at the start of a meeting next year, or maybe running a short discussion.
Margaret Fensom has offered to run a ginko next year, which I will schedule as our second meeting in April, unless there are objections. There is only a certain range of months in which the weather can be expected to be suitable and Margaret will be very busy with exams at the end of 2014. The proposal is to meet at the Box Factory and walk to Himeji Gardens (less than five minutes’ walk through the back streets). If the weather is inclement we still have the advantage of our indoor venue.

A social meeting of the group before our next meeting (Feb 2014) was discussed and those present favoured meeting if a suitable time and venue could be arranged. During some further discussion after the meeting it was suggested that January might be a better time than December and a Sunday afternoon tea meeting at the Museum was suggested. Lyn will email members for some feedback on this. The Museum café has the advantage of the owners not minding if you turn up in a group without formal booking and paying deposits in advance (as the Art Gallery demands). It is also very central for members to access.

Haibun Workshop: Maeve Archibald
Maeve started by looking at some principles of creative writing, giving some stimulation exercises to jog our minds into fresh approaches of looking at our writing. One of these was making words and sentences from the letters in our individual names.
Another exercise involved writing down a noun and two adjectives on small pieces of paper and passing on the adjectives to other people. We then wrote haibun using the words we had received and written.
Maeve gave each of us a haibun definition (selected at random) and we each read out our two definitions and expressed opinions on them. The range of definitions expanded our awareness of the variety of haibun types and how opinions had varied between authors and over time.
After a break for lunch we began some new exercises. First came an exercise to extend our perception of precise description. After we had produced all the words we could think of to describe ‘red’ we were asked to write a haibun mentioning three of those words ,as well as being aware in our writing of the basic sentence structures of: statement, question, exclamation and command. The variety of work produced during these exercises was fascinating and I think we would all agree that we had been stretched beyond our normal range of thought.

The meeting finished at 2 pm.

Minutes taken by Lynette Arden
2 November 2013

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