Explore the Woodend Haiku Festival 2025

Thanks to Helen for letting us know that the Woodend Haiku Festival is taking place throughout April around the town. Festival director Myron Lysenko is the Victorian representative of the Australian Haiku Society, and also founder and convener of Chamber Poets.

Various events are occurring throughout this month, coinciding with International Haiku Day on April 17.

… include a month-long haiku contest with an autumn theme, pop-up haiku poetry recitals, a free haiku picnic from 10am–1pm on April 2 at the Woodend Children’s Park, and a haiku-focused Chamber Poets event from 1–4pm on April 12.
Star Weekly 01/04/2025

The full program is detailed below:

WOODEND HAIKU FESTIVAL PROGRAM

1—30 April. Haiku contest on the theme of autumn.

1—30 April Pop-up Public Haiku Poets.

2 April 10am-1pm Haiku Picnic. Woodend Children’s Park.

12 April 1pm-4pm Chamber Poets #109, Woodend RSL. Featuring internationally renowned poets from the Victorian based haiku group The Fringe Myrtles, plus Open Section and haiku music by Black Forest Smoke.

17 April 10am-midday Woodend Library. Free. Celebrate the magical, wonderful world of haiku. Listen to readings or be guided into writing your own.

17 April 1.30-3.30pm Woodend Neighbourhood House. Free. Poets will read haiku to you, write one about you or help you write one.

30 April 6pm- 8pm Haiku Dinner at the Victoria Hotel, Woodend. $22 for meal and a drink.

Local poet and festival director, Myron Lysenko, is a representative of the Australian Haiku Society and has organised a range of activities to celebrate all things haiku, coinciding with International Haiku Day on April 17.
Midland Express 26/03/2025

Two press articles feature the festival: Star Weekly‘s current edition has a piece on Chamber Poets, including interviews with Myron and some of the collective volunteers, including our very own Helen McDonald. You can read the article by clicking here. And read the Midland Express feature by clicking here.

Star Weekly 01/04/2025: *Chamber Poets convener Myron Lysenko, and collective volunteers Jenny Zimmerman, Helen McDonald, Wendy Purcell, Talon Gostelow and Linda Stuart at the Woodend RSL. (Damjan Janevski). 466737_01*

under the same moon

Alive with birds and frogs, suffused with the threat of bushfire and flood, these haiku sing with the uniqueness of Australian life. The skill on show is breathtaking, as distinctive individual voices lay bare moments of joy, loss, awareness and connection to inner and outer landscapes.
Esther Ottaway, Winner, Tim Thorne Poetry Prize, Arts Tasmania Literary Awards, 2022

Congratulations to Helen McDonald of Elwood Writers on having three haiku included in under the same moon: Fourth Australian Haiku Anthology (eds. Lyn Reeves, Vanessa Proctor, Rob Scott).

Each poet in the book is “helping to form and shape a unique Australian voice, whether that is through haiku with distinctly Australian kigo or through senryu which explores the human element of life in this country from its cities, suburbs and rural towns to the natural environment”.

Published by Forty South in Tasmania, this beautiful book is available directly from the online shop at the publisher’s website. Simply click here for more information.

Well done, Helen. We can’t wait to read this!

Happy reading to everyone.

Local Lines from Helen McDonald

Congratulations to Helen on having a selection of haiku published in a recent bumper edition of The Local. You’ll find Helen’s haiku in Local Lines on page 76 at the following link:

The Local February 27, 2023 Issue 274

The Local is distributed throughout the Central Highlands including Daylesford, Hepburn, Trentham, Kyneton, Malmsbury, Lyonville, Glenlyon, Tylden, Newlyn, Blampied, Creswick, Clunes, Blackwood, Woodend – and everywhere in-between.

Well done, Helen.

Happy reading, everyone!

Creatrix 57 Haiku

Helen has recently been exploring the haiku/senryu/haibun poetry forms. She is delighted to have two haiku included in the latest WA Poets Inc online journal, Creatrix 57 Haiku. Read Helen’s poems at the following link:

https://wapoets.com/creatrix-57-haiku/

If you ever happen to find yourself in the Macedon Ranges of country Victoria, you might catch a glimpse of Helen on a gingko walk with other haiku poets – seeking inspiration in nature to write more of this beautiful short-form poetry.

Tonight’s stories

Tonight on Cover to Cover:

Jennifer’s ‘Teleférico’;
Helen’s ‘The Lake’, poems ‘In deep blue’ and ‘New’, and haiku inspired by Japan and Australia;
Margaret’s ‘The White Woman’ and ‘Home and Away’;
Barry’s ‘The Longstanding Arrangement’ and ‘Tongue’.

Thanks again to Alison Davies and Tim McQueen for reading the pieces, and to Tim for producing the program.

For all the information you’ll need to listen to the stories, click here.

Update: Special winter edition of Cover To Cover | Friday 12 & Sunday 14 July 2019

There was a problem with our calendar and we initially gave the wrong dates for the special upcoming winter-themed edition of the weekly literary program Cover To Cover on Vision Australia Radio. The program will be broadcast on Friday 12 July at 8.00pm, repeated Sunday 14 July at 1.30pm and will feature the members of Elwood Writers performing their own work. There’s poetry, including haiku, from Helen, and stories by Jennifer, Margaret, and Barry.

Cover To Cover can be heard on the radio in Australia or online from anywhere in the world. For frequency and other information and to access online listening visit the station’s website below:

https://radio.visionaustralia.org

A podcast will be available shortly after the broadcast, and we’ll add it to our podcast page here on the Elwood Writers website, so if you don’t get a chance to tune in on the day you can listen at your leisure.

Cover To Cover is produced by Tim McQueen and recorded in the studios of Vision Australia Radio in Melbourne.

Special winter edition of Cover To Cover | Friday 12 & Sunday 14 July 2019

Elwood Writers was in the studios of Vision Australia Radio in Kooyong on Thursday morning to record their pieces for a special upcoming winter-themed edition of the weekly literary program Cover To Cover.

The program features poetry, including haiku, by Helen, and stories by Jennifer, Margaret, and Barry, and goes to air on Friday 12 July at 8.00pm, repeated Sunday 14 July at 1.30pm.

Cover To Cover can be heard on the radio in Australia or online from anywhere in the world. For frequency and other information and to access online listening visit the station’s website below:

https://radio.visionaustralia.org

Cover To Cover is produced by Tim McQueen and recorded in the studios of Vision Australia Radio in Melbourne.

This post originally showed the dates of the program as Friday 5 July and Sunday 7 July 2019. This was incorrect, and the information has been amended.

Winter 2018 Soiree | Helen McDonald

In August, Elwood Writers held its Winter 2018 Soiree at St Kilda Library in Melbourne. In this post, Helen McDonald describes the work she presented at the event.

It takes time and a good deal of thought for Elwood Writers to arrange our program so that the literary readings are varied, complement each other and hopefully engage our audience. One of the things I enjoy most about our soirees is the range of genres covered, and not only hearing but delivering an interpretation of the pieces we have polished and workshopped in our group meetings. Each member of Elwood Writers brings their own unique voice to the occasion across fiction, memoir, short story and creative non-fiction.

My own leanings are towards poetry and memoir, and in this, our first public performance, I read a selection of poems as well as haiku, a poetic form I‘m very much enjoying exploring. Our appreciative audience were even subjected, from me, to a short analysis of what haiku is – and isn’t.

This time it was just as much a treat for us, as for the audience, to have Jenny’s chamber group providing musical interludes. Duo Con Brio (two thirds of Trio Con Brio) chose Bach as the perfect accompaniment for the literary works, and the combined sounds of oboe and cello clearly delighted everyone.

St Kilda Library’s community room was the perfect venue for this intimate evening with friends, acquaintances and family, and we were so pleased to welcome members of Roomers, the City Of Port Phillip creative writing project.

It is such a rewarding experience to share our work and with each soiree I like to think we raise the bar just a little bit higher.

All images HarrietClaire Photography

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live, work and learn, and we pay our respects to all elders past and present.