hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!
poet of the month: the FOUR EDITORS of Tanka Take Home
12th October -
Priti Aisola will be our featured poet this week. Priti's tanka has elegance and charm. Her meticulous weaving of words shows her mastery of the English language. And, the honesty in her writing shakes me up each time. Soft-spoken, (though I haven't met her yet, except in zoom meetings!) Priti comes across as a highly sensitive and caring person. Oh! I forgot to tell you - she is excellent at editing. Our poems are a reflection of us, isn't it? Enjoy. Take the time to unravel what we have in store for you.
You won't be disappointed.
jolted awake
by the rumble
of the dawn train …
the times I checked on you
to see if you were breathing
Ribbons, Fall issue 2021
on the road ahead
potholes and loose gravel
what would life be
if it were
a hurdle-free ride?
cattails, Autumn/October issue, 2020
midnight
the gate swings open
is it the wind
or you keeping
your promise to return?
moonbathing Issue 25, 2021
at sunrise
the night jasmine petals
scattered face down
I pray that I may die
as peacefully
moonbathing Issue 23, 2020
Priti Aisola is the author of: See Paris for Me, a novel (Penguin, 2009); Beyond the Gopurams, a spiritual travelogue (Wisdom Tree, 2014); A Dinner Invitation to God, poems (Writers Workshop, 2016); O Shrineless Silence, poems (Authorspress, 2017); Letters to Maya, creative nonfiction, (Authorspress, 2020). In 2020, she was introduced to haikai literature by Kala Ramesh and she is very grateful to her mentor for this. She loves being part of a very warm and welcoming community of poet-friends, who make her days rich and full of learning.
Challenge for this week:
Write around 10 tanka this week, learn to choose the best, and share it with us. Editing and critical assessment of your work are as important as writing the first draft. Look what Anita Virgil has to say: "Most poets do not bring fresh insight into their poems. They do not extract the extraordinary from ordinary things. First recognize the gold in its raw form - in that rough stage - then polish it, until it shines!"
A favourite quote of Hemingway’s – The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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 this theme too.
An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights
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.