The BHS Spring Gathering took place on 14th May 2022 by Zoom. It was a well-attended event with 30 plus members from both the UK and abroad.

David Bingham led the first session which was a sharing of ‘mini-haibun’ that had been sent in by BHS members before the event. The less than 80-word haibun which were discussed displayed a wide variety of form and content. They were written both by writers familiar with the genre and those for whom this was their first experience of writing haibun.

For the second part Iliyana Stoyanova led an ekphrastic haiku workshop. The participants had the opportunity to write two haiku based on the works of Ukrainian artists:
– a religious painting called “Icon of Archangel Gabriel” by Ivan Rutkovych/Іван Руткович (c.1650 – c.1708) – a Ukrainian icon painter, founder of Zhovkva (Жовква) Iconographic School of painting and wood carving;
– a piano piece called “Song without words”, Op.10/1 by Mykola Lysenko/Мико́ла Ли́сенко (1842 – 1912) – a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.

The resulting haiku were then shared and discussed.
Examples of the haibun and haiku were distributed with BHS newsletter ‘the brief #132’

Write-up by David Bingham and Iliyana Stoyanova