TANKA TAKE HOME — 13th May, 2026 Featuring poet: Stacey Dye

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

13th May, 2026

poet of the month: Stacey Dye

these scars

send memories flickering

through my mind—

souvenirs of a troubled life

play out on grainy film

red lights, June 2021

this flower moon

waxes in the May sky…

casting out

everything I kept bound up

all the springs of my life

One Moment at a Time, Tanka Society Members Anthology 2023

always a survivor

never the victim. . .

a flower

rises from beneath

the crush of a shoe

red lights, January 2021

We thank Stacey warmly for sharing her poems and for her thoughtful responses to our questions.

Q.2

TTH: How did you get started as a poet? What was it about tanka that inspired you to embrace this ancient form of poetry? In short, why do you keep writing tanka?

SD: I started writing free verse as a form of self-expression. I loved the freedom it afforded me to explore my feelings. As far as writing tanka, if I’m absolutely honest, I began to try my hand at it because I was finding it difficult to maintain a conceit at length. I was having “short attention span  itis!” I began writing some Renga with a fellow free verse poet and she 

introduced me to the AHA poetry forum where I began to try my hand at tanka. I credit Chen-ou Liu as a major influence. He helped me find my way. A mentor of sorts.

I continue to write because I love the creative outlet and because it is extremely cathartic for me. Expressing feeling and emotion and purging my past is incredibly liberating.

About the poet in her own words:

I’ve loved words forever. I collect them on rocks, jewelry and tokens. I began to write poetry over ten years ago. I started with free verse and ultimately found I loved tanka. It is a wonderful release for my feelings and emotions. I live in South Georgia, USA with my husband Dennis, my cat Frankie and dog Happy.

Your Challenge this Week:

Take inspiration from Stacey's lovely tanka and write about survival and what it means to you. It can be anything; go where the word takes you ...

Have fun!

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 of these themes as well.

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.