TANKA TAKE HOME : 13 April — a Wednesday feature

hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola, and Suraja Roychowdhury

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

book of the month: 'the forest i know' by Kala Ramesh

‘the forest i know’, for me, despite the name, is like a river meandering through the landscape of life. A woman’s life. But, first it was a trickle of awareness.

truth lies

concealed in maya

and beneath the veil

once lifted

truth lies

(I love the play on the word ‘lies’, it lifts the tanka to another level)

And then, the stream gurgles into a stronger current of self-awareness.

treading

the trodden path

this autumn dusk

I come to realize

I’m just ordinary

easily drawn

into the stillness

between stars

I look for the spaces

within me

if I let go

of everything I cherish

the winds

would surely carry me

away like a feather

Every Wednesday for the month of April, I will be sharing some of the poems that touched me the most. Let’s venture on this journey together, feel the rawness of heartbreak, and the honest vulnerability of a poet finding herself. I will let the poems speak for themselves. Ponder over them, and glean your own interpretation. Tell me about it and then, write your poems in the comments.

An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights

Are you inspired!

We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished tanka and tanka-prose (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in haikuKATHA monthly magazine.

Also, please do mention, under your poem, if you would like feedback.

But wait a minute before you start writing your tanka. We thought we’d give our members something to think about; to try a different approach from what they’ve been writing so far. Here’s the challenge for the week. Write a tanka in the 1/4 image format. You can click on the link given above and read all about it. To make this even more challenging, we’ve decided to consider only tanka written in this format this week for haikuKATHA. Good Luck, but most of all have fun while you learn.

Here are some examples by Kala Ramesh.

1/4 divide:

autumn fields - a fork in the road widening our shadows even farther

alone now … I light the oil lamp at sunset to keep the gathering darkness from hemming in my soul

kids long gone … this autumn dusk I linger in each room remembering the candle-melting laughter

Looking forward to some amazing poems.