TANKA TAKE HOME — 17th December '25 Featuring poet: Michele L. Harvey

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

17th December, 2025

poet of the month: Michele L. Harvey

as if 

there were magic yet 

in this world 

the syncing little lamps 

of fireflies in the field 

Ribbons, Autumn 2018

constellations 

formed by fallen leaves  

of a sweet gum... 

I reach down 

to touch the stars 

MET, Spring 2008 

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

Q5. 

TTH: Can you give any advice to someone wanting to write and publish tanka? As an  editor what are you looking for in a tanka that makes it most likely to get published?

Michele: Robert Frost said, Poetry amounts to “an art of having something to say.” Tanka is elastic, but be sure your poem is understandable & conveys meaning.

Dennis Garrison describes Tanka as “5 phrases in 5 lines.” 

Tanka should be lyrical, song-like & 5 lines written as, short/long/short/long/long (this is  a helpful guideline, but not an absolute)

No capital letters except proper names & no periods as punctuation. Tanka should feel like the middle of a story, without actual beginning or ending.

Personally, I most appreciate Tanka which have a central juxtaposition or ‘twist’ and  which build with a crescendo to line 5, giving an AHA moment to the reader. 

What I would suggest to anyone wanting to write & publish Tanka poems is read  everything you can about the form, particularly the Tanka Teachers Guide found on the  Tanka Society of America’s website (https://sites.google.com/site/ 

tankasocietyofamerica/tanka-teachers-guide)  

and  

Jane Reichhold’s WIND FIVE-FOLDED School of Tanka (https://www.ahapoetry.com/ Bare Bones/wfftocintro.html), as well as any Tanka publications and journals. 

Learn the general guidelines and history. Keep a personal, private list of poets & their  poems for inspiration. Always carry a pocket pad & pen and keep one by your bedside.  Be prepared to trash half of your output, but keep a running file of those poems that  need a little polishing (work). Keep a file of what you’ve submitted, where & when as  well as what’s been accepted, where & date. Read journals before submitting, to see if  your work may fit. Be brave & never take acceptance or rejection personally. 

More about the poet:

Michele's career has been as a professional landscape artist, painting in both oil & watercolor since 1976, in New York, USA. 

Your Challenge this Week!

Michele captures the magic of the moment in her tanka. Where do you find your magic? That's the challenge for this week. Share your thoughts on the tanka shared too. 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.