May 20, 2006 - Meeting & Kukai

Descanso Gardens - May 20, 2006

The Southern California Haiku Study Group met in the picnic area of Descanso Gardens, enjoying the shade and the antics of squirrels. Jerry, Peggy, Linda, Nardin, Debbie, Janis, and a few others participated in the kukai.

Haiku was written for the following Southern California May kigo:

The Season: end of spring, spring morn, crisp morning, gray May

Flowers and Plants: spent lilacs, first cherries, poppies, late blooming wisteria, mustard, bougainvillea, periwinkles

Sky and Heavens: warm spring breeze, spring sky, mother's moon, hare moon, spring moon, milk moon, morning fog

Birds and Animals: Feeding the squirrels, chirping baby birds, baby rabbits, scrub jay babies, crows eating baby birds, new brood of quail

Mountains and Fields: fresh grass, wildflowers

Human Affairs: Mother's Day, Renaissance Faire, Memorial Day, Cinco de Mayo, midseason baseball, French Open, graduation

A few poets met before the meeting for tea in the Japanese Garden.

The June 17, 2006 meeting & kukai will also be held at Descanso Gardens, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm. Those who wish to meet before the meeting for 1:00 pm tea in the Japanese Garden should contact Debbie Kolodji.

April 22, 2006 - Meeting & Kukai

The Southern California Haiku Study Group is in search of a new location. For the past several years the group has met in the Borders Bookstore in Cerritos, California on the third Saturday of the Month.

In February, the store moved to a smaller location less than a block away. However, the new store no longer has meeting room space.

Today's meeting was in the food court outside of the Border's Cerritos. Obviously, this is not a good long-term solution.

Any ideas?

April 7, 2006 - Teahouse Meeting, San Jose

Fay Aoygai and Wendy Wright
Japanese Friendship Garden, Kelley Park
San Jose, California

Four members of the Southern California Haiku Study Group traveled north to San Jose for a free haiku morning workshop by the Yuki Teikei Society and an afternoon haiku reading by Fay Aoygai and Wendy Wright.

The workshop starting at 10:00 in the Japanese tea house in San Jose’s Kelley Park. Participants had a short discussion based on the zen haiku book Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey by Clark Strand, which was followed by a kukai based on kigo observed in the garden. There was a 45 minute haiku break to wander the garden, sit and watch the koi, and write haiku before returning.

The list of kigo included:

bird nesting, Japanese maple “young leaves”, wisteria blooming, returning ducks, cherry blossoms, budding anything, pineapple weed, returning egret, spring rain, spring storm

After the kukai, where SCHSG member Linda Galloway wrote the haiku with the most votes, there was a short break before the 1:30 pm reading by Aoyagi and Wright. This was followed by an open haiku reading done in a circle, where each participant read one haiku at a time.

Open reading participants included Roger Abe, Fay Aoyagi, Ann Bendixen, Claire Gallagher, Linda Galloway and her husband Nardin, Deborah P Kolodji, Patricia Machmiller, Linda Papanicolaou, Carol Steele, Ebba Story, Alison Woolpert, and Wendy Wright and others.

At 4:30 pm, fourteen participants went to a restaurant in Japantown to finish off the day.

April 5, 2006 - CSULB Japanese Garden Open House

Today members of the Southern California Haiku Study Group manned a table at an open house for educators at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden at CSULB.

Jerry Ball, Deborah P Kolodji, and Wendy Wright participated in this event, speaking to grade school teachers about haiku as they dropped by the SCHSG table.

feeding time
a group of koi almost out
of the pond

-- Deborah P Kolodji

March 19, 2006 - CSULB Japanese Garden Workshop

Deborah P Kolodji, Jerry Ball, and Linda Galloway

The Southern California Haiku Study Group hosted a haiku event in the Japanese Garden at CSULB.

Jerry Ball, Deborah P Kolodji, Linda Galloway, and Vic Gendrano were all there to read haiku and interact with garden visitors.

We had a haiku display and copies of our group chapbook, Tide and Time, available for sale.

Children visiting the garden with their families were encouraged to write haiku and received a coupon for free koi food if they wrote one.