TANKA TAKE HOME — 20th August '25 Featuring poet: Michael Dylan Welch

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

August 20th, 2025

poet of the month: Michael Dylan Welch

overcast sky—

for the first time

I wonder

where my parents

will be buried

Mariposa #1, Autumn 1999

the grass outside

in need of a mow . . .

after his sickness,

it’s good to see my son

fighting with his sister

Gusts #23, Spring/Summer 2016

wildflower seeds

sprinkled in the garden—

mother calls to say

she can no longer remember

this and that

Skylark 6:1, Summer 2018

I wake up

with a start

this winter morning

wondering if my dad

was buried wearing shoes

Ribbons 17:2, Spring/Summer 2021

a wisteria arbor

in late autumn—

I sit until

I am the only sitter

and I too disappear

Tangled Hair #5, May 2006

4. TTH: Who are your favourite tanka poets? In addition to tanka what other genres of poetry do you write or read? Tell us about some of the books you've enjoyed.

Michael: Among Japanese writers, I’m not sure I have favourites so much as I have poets whose work I happen to have read, again thinking of translations by Hirshfield and Goldstein, and by Janine Beichman, along with many other academic translators (Carter, Ueda, Watson, Sato, Keene, so many others). The poets they translated varied a great deal, from the vulnerable minimalism of Takuboku to the formal elevation of Ono no Komachi. But honestly, I don’t really have favourite tanka poets, and that includes English-language tanka too. Maybe it would be good to develop favourites, but I tend to focus on poems more than poets.

I also read (and write) a great deal of longer poetry. Kay Ryan, Mary Oliver, Dana Gioia, Jane Hirshfield, and Billy Collins are a few of my favourites, and E. E. Cummings (I’m a contributing editor to Spring, the journal of the E. E. Cummings Society). And let me also say Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky, among poets for children. I also enjoy anthologies of poetry, lately by James Crews and John Brehm. The themes in some anthologies can give poems context and accessibility that help to open them up. I recently read two large books of collected poetry by Linda Pastan and found many poems to enjoy, but also many that didn’t connect with me, perhaps because I had to work to give each poem context in my life—and sometimes there was no context, no connection. In contrast, I find much to connect with in the poems of Mary Oliver, and I’ve written an extensive essay on her theme of attention and how it applies to haiku poetry. In any case, it’s impossible to keep up with so many good poets.

Where I live near Seattle, I’m president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword that showcases poets regularly, and for nearly 20 years I’ve also curated a separate reading series called SoulFood Poetry Night. Both monthly events feature leading poets of the greater Seattle area and beyond, including Pultizer-prize winners and other prominently published role-models. This has brought a lot of local poets to me, and I routinely read their books. This has taught me the value of being a successful “regional” poet. We can’t all have a national profile like Billy Collins. On the other hand (here’s an aside for you), David Navarro of the Arizona State Poetry Society once said, “Michael Dylan Welch is the Billy Collins of haiku.” I’m no Billy Collins, but maybe I’ve written a few decent haiku—and tanka. It’s true that building a regional reputation is worthwhile, something to be proud of. Haiku and tanka poets have the luxury of being part of niche communities where worldwide appreciation is possible, but it’s still admirable to embrace a regional appreciation too, especially when one puts haiku and tanka into a larger poetry perspective. But, building a reputation isn’t the goal—writing good poetry is.

As for books, I have about 14,000 of them, all of which are meticulously catalogued. I keep track of which ones I’ve read, too. In 2024 I read 101 books, and 99 the year before. That includes a lot of short haiku and tanka books, so not equivalent to reading that many novels! But it’s a lot of reading—I always have several books on the go at any given time. For 2024, that amounted to 7,896 pages or 21.57 pages per day (on a leap year). Favourite books were three poetry anthologies edited by James Crews, and poetry books by Robert Sund, Frank Samperi, and John Brehm. Among haiku books read in 2024, a few favourites were Dan Curtis’s First Notes, Deborah P Kolodji’s Vital Signs, John Brandi’s At It Again: New & Selected Haiku, Kristen Lindquist’s Island, Madoka Mayuzumi’s Kyoto Haiku, and paul m.’s Witness Tree, among others. There were some tanka books among my reading, too, but I need to read more tanka!

5. 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?

Michael: The usual advice is to read more than you write. And read tanka widely—traditional love poems, experimental confessions, the extreme and the middle of the road. Translations as well as tanka in English. It’s good, too, I think, to try emulating these varieties. You may not master all possibilities, but you can give yourself exposure to them all. You’ll give yourself a broader palette to paint from. And when you write a poem, it may naturally come out one way or another. You may feel the impetus to write a love tanka in a formal style (and I don’t mean counting syllables), or want to be freewheeling, perhaps even embracing the bizarre or unexplainable (trusting the intuition). A wide reading experience will open doors to changing how you write, depending on the poem idea that first tickles you with inspiration.

As I mentioned before, I try to fill up an entire notebook before considering any of the poems for possible publication. That distance generates objectivity, enabling me to see even my own work freshly. It’s a percentage game. Write a lot. Then select the best for submitting to journals or contests. And then a smaller percentage will appear in print. And be selective once again to assemble the best of one’s published work for a cohesive book manuscript. Constant winnowing. It helps if one is reasonably prolific, and not everyone has that luxury, so another piece of advice, as your time allows, is to write more. Easy, right? Let yourself write badly, too, because if you write more, a percentage of your output won’t be bad, and if you write for the long haul, eventually you’ll amass a body of poems that are well worth publishing. It takes patience and perseverance. No shortcuts. And down the road, when you might put a book of tanka together, perhaps you’ll see themes or narrative connections. That might give rise to a manuscript that clicks together, rather than just being a disorderly assemblage of greatest hits. This means leaving out some excellent poems because they might not fit the flow. As they say, kill your darlings, or at least set some of them aside.

It’s been a while since I’ve edited tanka (the last time was in 2020 for the Tanka Society of America’s 20th anniversary members’ anthology, Dance into the World), but one thing I look for in haiku that would apply to tanka is surefootedness. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that some poems just exude a sense of rightness, and that if I entertain a possible change, no matter how slight, I immediately sense why such a change wouldn’t work. The best poets refine everything, down to the punctuation and indents, word choice and rhythm, meaning and implication, not to mention the sequence of images. The puzzle is complete. And with many good poems I read, I don’t even think of possible changes. They have simply snapped shut, in the best possible way, brimming with rightness.

I mentioned before that it’s worthwhile to read a lot, but that’s not necessarily enough. You also want to take time to assess what you read, perhaps separately after you let the poems wash over you (welcome that “precognitive response” first!). Then you can think about why and how each poem works, to figure out why this or that possible change won’t help. In the process of considering what works in your own poems, or in poems written by others, it’s good to develop detailed habits of scrutiny. This is conscientious reading, not just reading for pleasure (though there’s a place for that too, in fact as a priority). It takes work. This is how the best poets learn to understand their craft. It’s how their poems become surefooted.

As for publishing, I would never try to write for publication. Just write. Just be yourself. That doesn’t mean to write with no awareness of what others have done (you don’t want to keep reinventing the wheel). This is where empathy, vulnerability, and authenticity arise, as an expression of yourself that no one else can achieve. Beyond that, I always say that at some point you want to think through your poems to consider whether they move from private meaning to public clarity, or at least enough clarity so the poem (usually) isn’t inscrutable to readers. My sense is that you want to give readers enough of an entry point, unless of course you want to risk seeming to be arrogant and inaccessible. You don’t want to write for publication, but it’s good to edit for publication. Again, it’s a percentage game. Find a journal you enjoy reading. Send a set of your poems to it. See what happens. Try again, whether your work is accepted or not. Whenever work is returned, send that work out somewhere else, that day. Use “rejection” as motivation. And if your work reveals your heart, speaking truly of your unique experience, with sufficient crafting, then editors will respond to it and welcome your work for publication. Or you may find that some editors just aren’t wired to appreciate your work, which is also valuable to learn—and you move on. For folks new to writing and publication, these processes take patience. I don’t take “rejection” too closely to heart (good work is frequently returned for a variety of reasons). But I also remind myself not to take publication too seriously either.

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

More about the poet:

Michael Dylan Welch writes haiku, tanka, longer poetry, essays, reviews, and other content, and documents his writing life on his website, www.graceguts.com. This site includes a section on tanka at https://www.graceguts.com/tanka, featuring numerous poems and sequences, and essays on tanka. Michael founded the Tanka Society of America in 2000, and has organized all six of the society’s conferences, with a seventh one scheduled for San Francisco in September of 2025. With Emiko Miyashita, he translated the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a thirteenth-century collection of waka poems (later known as tanka). In 2012, one of their translations from this book was featured on the back of 150 million U.S. postage stamps. Michael also cofounded the Haiku North America conference in 1991 and the American Haiku Archives in 1996, and founded the Seabeck Haiku Getaway in 2008 and National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) in 2010. He also served two terms as poet laureate for Redmond, Washington, where he is president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword and curator (since 2006) of the monthly SoulFood Poetry Night reading series. Michael is originally from England and grew up there and in Ghana, Australia, and Canada, and has lived in Sammamish, Washington (near Seattle) since 2003. In 2023, he and his Japanese wife became U.S. citizens.

Your Challenge this Week:

Michael’s tanka bring together natural images with internal dialogues, which work really well. At first, they might feel random, but on close inspection, we can see the link. This week, let’s delve into our thoughts and pair them with an external image. And do tell us how you felt reading his tanka—we’d love to know. Looking forward to reading your poems. Enjoy!

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.