TANKA TAKE HOME — 12th November '25 Featuring poet: Reid Hepworth

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

November, 2025

poet of the month: Reid Hepworth

Reid, we thank you warmly for sharing your poems and for your thoughtful responses to our questions.

3.

TTH: How do you develop a tanka? Please guide us through the stages of a poem. 

Writing is an organic process (to me), I don’t try to formulate it, I just let it come out naturally. The majority of my writing happens when I am out and about in nature. Something will strike my interest and I will stop, jot it down in the Notes app on my iPhone. Often though, I will formulate as I walk and will come up with a rough draft before I commit to putting the words in Notes.

I repeat the poem in my head until I have a semblance of what the poem sounds like, feels like. I believe in reciting aloud as it helps to hear the musicality of a piece and the parts that may not work or are stumbling blocks. I do this despite the looks I get in public! 

Once I am at home or in a place where I can sit and think, I will reread the piece and look at the framework…does it follow s/l/s/l/l, do I need to move a line for better flow, have I used the right word? Does anything need a tweak or a major overhaul? 

I will work at a piece for quite a while before letting it sit. For whatever reason, some poems arrive fully formed, while others take time or don’t work. Working or not, I don’t throw anything away. I will keep rough drafts for quite some time, as there may be a line or a phrase that I like and may use elsewhere.

One of the nicest things for me about short-form poetry is the fact that I can write anywhere. I am inspired in the moment, so I write in the moment. I don’t need to be sitting at a desk or tied to a writing schedule, like I was in my earlier years when I thought I was going to be a novelist. I don’t feel the need to formalize my writing life now. Seize the day. Be in the Now.

More about the poet:

Background:

Reid Hepworth has been enamoured with words and storytelling since childhood. Even though being a writer was a lifelong goal, she didn’t start writing haikai poetry until late 2021. Once she started on the haikai path, she couldn’t stop. 

Since then Reid has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Touchstone Awards. She has published a book with Adisakrit Publishing - loss is a river (2024) and her second book again with Adisakrit Publication, the improbability of sea monkeys (is upcoming) 2025. Her work appears in journals and anthologies worldwide. Reid is the current associate editor at Drifting Sands Haibun and a past associate editor of The Haibun Gallery at Triveni Haiku India. 

Reid spent most of her life on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada and now splits her time between Georgian Bay, Ontario and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. 

Now for Reid's tanka and tanka-prose for the 2nd week:

rain 

arrives at dusk

in the flatlands

the song

of a meadowlark

haikuKATHA issue 10

mid-fall

the lavender in bloom

again

of all my worldly wishes

I yearn for second chances

The Art of Tanka Issue 3

fiery red

of a sumac at dawn

in the mirror

I contemplate

the vagaries of youth

Gusts issue 40

Changing Landscapes

Moving cautiously through the front drive, the bear takes a moment to sniff the air. It’s skinnier than I remember, the late spring affecting the summer crops and the ever-expanding deforestation above us. I watch through the window, hoping that I remembered to put the bungee cord around the garbage can.

the house

that was home 

is empty now

our love raked over

in legalise

haikuKATHA Issue 10, Editors' Choice

Your Challenge this Week, and it's a challenge!

We'd love to know your thoughts on Reid's beautiful poems. I would like to refresh your memory on 'mono no aware' beauty in pathos. Life's fleeting moments are transient. All the poems presented above are striking examples of this most beautiful and one of my favourite Japanese aesthetics. Try your hand at introducing 'mono no aware' in your tanka and tanka-prose. The most easily remembered tip for this aesthetic tool is 'cherry blossom' - they bloom for a week and are gone.

On the link between impermanence and beauty: “If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty” (Keene, 7). The acceptance and celebration of impermanence goes beyond all morbidity, and enables full enjoyment of life:

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

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 these themes, too.

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.