February 25, '26 Featuring poet: Neal Whitman

hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

25th February, 2026

poet of the month: Neal Whitman

my poetry group

gathers at the park terrace

rain-blessed leaves

transform the concrete surface

into a Greek mossaic

  cattails, September 2014, Pen the Painting prize

a lovely seabird

dips her wing into a wave

we drop anchor

rising from the spindrift

a rainbow leaves us too soon

cattails Fall 2015, first honorable mention, Fleeting Words contest

sushi bar patrons

watch Sumo wrestling

TV on mute —

I order blowfish stew

and wake up dead

Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Winter 2018

Neal, we thank you warmly for sharing your poems and your thoughtful responses to our questions. It has been a pleasure featuring your poetry on our site this month!

More about the poet:

Neal Whitman was born in Boston, Massachsetts (1948) and attended the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Class of 1969), where he acquired a love of the poetry of Emily Dickinson portrayed in later years as “The Belle of Amherst”. Neal then headed to graduate school at the University of Michigan to study Higher Education (1969 - 1971). He found his niche in medical education and in 1978 completed a doctor of education degree at Columbia University where he met his future wife Elaine. One focus of his medical school work was to add poetry, performing arts , and visual arts to supplement the science of medicine. Upon retirement from the University of Utah School of Medicine in 2008 as Professor Emeritus, Neal picked up the pace of writing general poetry which he had initiated in 2005 as a transition into life after medical education. In 2008 he added haiku to his repertoire and joined the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society where in 2023  he was designated a dojin. In 2011 he had resolved to read and write tanka which prompted him to join the Tanka Society of America and the International Tanka Socety. In the past, Neal served as Vice President of the United Haiku and Tanka Society. Neal and Elaine reside in Pacific Grove, California. Elaine  also is a haiku poet. Living close to Monterey Bay inspires their poetry.

6.

TTH: Do you show your work in progress to anyone, or is it a solitary art that you keep close to your chest before letting it go for publishing? 

I depend on my wife, Elaine, who can recall poetry read as a  child and adult. Her oral recitation of my poems reveals glitches. Again, if it does not sound right, it is not right. Amelia Fielden also via email offers, but does not demand revision. Mostly she is affirming — she knows her suggestions are only that. This is a reciprocal relationship, so I do the same for her.

Your Challenge This Week:

I like to think that all 3 of the tanka shared this week by Neal are light-hearted. Of course, dreaming that you're dead after eating blowfish stew isn't exactly happy, but there is a dark humor there, and it was a dream after all. Or was it... :).

I live in Boston, USA, and we are having a massive snow storm and blizzard as I write this, and I need some cheering up. Write tanka about extreme weather, but see if you can use some lightness - seeing the positive, or the funny, when the surroundings are anything but...

Give these ideas some thought and share your tanka and tanka-prose with us here. Keep your senses open, observe things that happen around you and write. You can post tanka and tanka-prose outside of these themes as well.

And remember – tanka, because of those two extra lines, lends itself most beautifully when revealing a story. And tanka prose is storytelling. Most importantly, have fun!

PLEASE NOTE

1. Post only one poem at a time, only one per day.

2. Only 2 tanka and two tanka-prose per poet per prompt.

Tanka art, of course, if you want to.

3. Share your best-polished pieces.

4. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written. Let it simmer for a while.

5. Post your final edited version on top of your original verse.

6. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.

We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished tanka and tanka-prose (within 250 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly magazine.