Haiku Down Under 2024 

Alice Wanderer began writing haiku when living in Japan in the 1990s. Her translation of a selection of Sugita Hisajo’s haiku Lips Licked Clean won a Touchstone Award in 2021. Flow, a chapbook of haibun about her local area can be bought from Ginninderra Press. She is a member of Melbourne’s Fringe Myrtles haiku group.

Workshop: In Full Voice

Living on the South coast of NSW, Australia, Carole Harrison has published haiku and tanka in local and overseas anthologies and journals since 2010. She has won some haiku awards and really enjoys friendships with poets from around the world.

Workshop: Writing Prompts

Dr Greg Pritchard is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts administrator. He has a PhD in literature and environmental philosophy and a Masters of Art in Shadows and Performance. He currently works part time for the Booranga Writers’ Centre in Wagga Wagga on Wiradyuri country. https://www.gregpritchard.space/

Presentation: The World's Longest Haiku and other writing art

Jason Richardson is an interdisciplinary artist and curator based in the Riverina region, NSW. In his creative projects Jason uses haiku in publications, music and exhibitions. His book Earthwords developed as part of an exhibition at Griffith Regional Art Gallery in 2019 that blurred the distinction between artist and audience by encouraging cutting and repurposing the text. As a longterm contributor to Naviar Records' haiku challenges he has produced many hours of original music in response to poems and worked with their online community for the Crossing Streams exhibition in Narrandera during 2017.

Panel: When the going gets weird, the weird turn prose!

Julia Wakefield is a visual artist and illustrator, and she came to haiku via a developing interest in writing poetry of all genres. She has one published collection of poetry in the Friendly Street New Poets series and her haiku have been published in the 2023 AHS poetry anthology, Under the Same Moon, as well as in Echidna Tracks and Creatrix. Her haiku a cloudless day was the winner of the European Kukai 2021. Julia’s Haiga out without my phone was one of four traditional Haiga to receive an honourable mention in the 2023 Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Competition.

Presentation: The Art of Creating a Haiga

Julie Thorndyke is a graduate of the University of Sydney’s Master of Creative Writing program. Her collections of tanka poetry, Rick Rack, Carving Granite, and Borrowed Riches were published by Ginninderra Press. Editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal since 2017, Julie’s books include Mrs Rickaby’s Lullaby (novel) and Divertimento (short stories).

Julie’s picture books Waiting for the Night (2018) and Watching through the Day (2020) were published by IPKidz. Her third picture book Alice’s Shoe was published by MidnightSun Publishing in 2023. It tells the true story of deafblind girl Alice Betteridge, who became known as ‘Australia’s Helen Keller’.

juliethorndyke.com/

Workshop: Memoir Tanka workshop

Leanne Mumford is an Australian writer and photographer, who enjoys practising her crafts wherever she goes. A keen traveller, Leanne’s haiku often reveal a strong sense of place. Since 2012 more than 200 of her haiku, plus haiga and haibun have appeared in various Australian and international journals and anthologies. Her haiku ‘wind song’ won a Touchstone Award for Individual Poems 2019. Leanne is a founding member of the online Inkstone Poetry Forum. She convenes the Gadigal Ginko casual events in Sydney. Leanne joined the Executive Committee of the Australian Haiku Society in 2022. Her personal website is lemumford.id.au.

Workshop: Concrete Foundations – a sense-based images workshop

Louise Hopewell is a Naarm/Melbourne-based poet, playwright and songwriter. She is an enthusiastic member of the Fringe Myrtles haiku group and her haiku awards include first place in the inaugural John Bird Dreaming Award for Haiku, 2020, first place in the Gene Murtha Memorial Senryu Contest, 2020 and joint first place in the KM100NZ Haiku Competition, 2023. Louise loves making people laugh and led a community laughter group for many years. When not writing or laughing, Louise can be found playing ukulele or riding her bicycle (alas not at the same time). Find out more about Louise at https://louisehopewellwriter.wordpress.com/

Workshop: In search of the ha ha moment

Lyn Reeves has been involved with English Language Haiku for over thirty years, editing local and international haiku journals and serving in various roles for the AHS since its inception in 2000, most recently as Vice President. Her first collection, Walking the Tideline (Pardalote Press, 2004) is available as a free download here. Her most recent collection Field of Stars (Walleah Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the Tim Thorne Poetry Prize, Tasmanian Literary Awards 2022. Along with Vanessa Proctor and Rob Scott, Lyn co-edited under the same moon: Fourth Australian Haiku Anthology (Forty South Publishing, 2023). 

Workshop:  Food for Haiku

Marietta McGregor has lived in Canberra, Australia with her family for five decades. A photography enthusiast and keen traveller, she was first drawn to haiku in 2015. Her haiku, haibun and artworks appear in international journals and anthologies, have featured on Japanese television, and have won awards in Australia, Japan, the UK, Europe, Canada, and the USA. She currently serves on the panel of judges for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Haibun Awards.

Presentation: Our Five Senses

Michael Leach (@m_jleach) is an Australian poet, critic and academic based on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Michael’s poems have appeared in journals (e.g. Cordite), anthologies (e.g. under the same moon: Fourth Australian Haiku Anthology [FSP, 2023]), and his two poetry books: Chronicity (MPU, 2020) and Natural Philosophies (RWP, 2022). Michael’s poems have also won or been shortlisted/commended in the Hippocrates Prize, UniSA Mental Health and Wellbeing Poetry Competition, Minds Shine Bright Confidence Writing Competition, and Woollahra Digital Literary Award. During 2024, Michael will publish a collection of haiku/senryu (ICOE Press) plus a collection of poems about sounds (Ginninderra Press).

Presentation: Sounds from Down Under: An Exploration of Auditory Imagery in Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Haiku and Senryu

Owen Bullock has published five collections of haiku, Summer Haiku (2019), River’s Edge (2016), Urban Haiku (2015), Breakfast with Epiphanies (2012), Wild Camomile (2009); a bilingual collection of tanka, Uma rocha enorme que anda à roda (‘A big rock that turns around’), translated into Portuguese by Francisco Carvalho (Temas Originais, 2021); four books of poetry, Pancakes for Neptune (2023), Work & Play (2017), Semi (2017), Sometimes the Sky Isn’t Big Enough (2010); the novella, A Cornish Story (2010), and seven chapbooks of poetry, haiku and haibun. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Canberra. Other interests include juggling, music and chess. poetry-in-process.com @OwenTrail

Workshop: Editing Haiku

Presentation: Haiku and Mindfulness

Peter Free is a science teacher from Wellington and has spent many years travelling and working in Asia. He joined an online poetry forum about four years ago and was introduced to the modern form of haiku. Since then, he has written nothing else and has become increasingly comfortable with his own identity as a writer of haiku. He has been fortunate to place in several international haiku competitions including winning the Katanogahara Story Award in the 3rd Star Haiku Contest (Japan) in 2022 and was one of the first places in the Basho-an Haiku Contest (Japan) in 2023.

Workshop:  All things Haiku

Rob Scott, current (Vice) President of the Australian Haiku Society, began his haiku journey in Tokyo in the mid-1990s where he became a member of a local haiku group. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in many countries over the past 25 years. Rob has published two major collections of haiku and recently co-edited the Fourth Australian Haiku Anthology (2023). Rob lives in Melbourne where he is the convener of the Fringe Myrtles Haiku Group.

Presentation: Australian Haiku, Is it (still) a Thing?

Ron C. Moss is an artist and poet from Tasmania, a place of inspiring wilderness. His haiku and related genres have been widely published, translated into several languages and won many international prizes. Ron has published several haiku collections that have won prestigious awards. He often combines his art and award-winning photography with his poetry to create haiga. He is the current haiga editor for Contemporary Haiga Online. Ron is a veteran volunteer fire-fighter of 27yrs and a Life Member of his brigade. Ron’s latest collection is Cloud Hands, available directly from him along with his previous books at ronmoss8gmail.com. 

Presentation:  A Way of Art and Haiku

Sandra Simpson is an award-winning haiku poet who lives in Tauranga, New Zealand. She is the founding editor of the online resource Haiku NewZ; secretary of the Katikati Haiku Pathway committee; South Pacific nominating editor for the annual Red Moon anthologies; and was co-editor of the fourth New Zealand haiku anthology, ‘number eight wire’ (2019). Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies around the world, and she regularly judges international haiku contests. Sandra blogs about haiku and related themes at her website, breath: https://breathhaiku.wordpress.com/

Presentation:   Going in Blind: Letting our other senses lead us into poetry.

Presentation: Where the Magic Happens

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Steve Wigg is from Adelaide. He has been involved with haiku for some years, and is also an apprentice Zen teacher. His formal Zen practice spans about twenty-five years, but also includes study from the Burmese tradition of Classical Buddhism. He has a deep interest in the traditions of Classical China, and also the Tang and Sung Dynasties which brought much of their influences to Japan. This of course means he is interested in the distinctive flavour the Japanese bring to all of this, and in turn how these traditions have now evolved in the West – both as poetry and other forms.

Presentation: The Zen Roots of Wabi-sabi

Tim Roberts lives on the Kapiti Coast just north of Wellington, New Zealand with his family.  Tim was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at 49 and has found meaning and a new sense of possibility in reading and writing haiku. He and Albie, an old and deaf dog, enjoy living in a way that makes haiku inevitable and they often go foraging for poetic material, especially on nearby beaches.  Tim’s book Busted! (Red Moon Press) is haiku and micro poetry about his experience as a British police officer. He also experiments with art by collecting and painting driftwood. 

Presentation: A Virtual Multi-Sensory Ginko