TANKA TAKE HOME: 21st August 2024 - Claire Rosilda Norman- poet of the month

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

August 21, 2024

poet of the month: Claire Rosilda Norman

they say that water

fell as rain on Venus

pooled into oceans

deeper than any on Earth

the days when you loved me

the professor asked

to what may we compare

these Jovian moons -

Io is never still

always burning for you

We had the pleasure of asking Claire a few questions, and she graciously took the time to answer them. Here is the third:

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.

Claire: Some of my favourites are still the first tanka I read, Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu were both ladies-in-waiting in the palace some thousand years ago, but wrote poems full of passion and power that have a timeless quality. Their emotions still stir a response in me.

In more recent years - well, there are a good number of poets at All Poetry who have written some amazing tanka.

I write haiku and haibun as well, and if I want a real change of pace then an epic rhyming ballad-type poem, often featured Arthur, Merlin or Morgan-le-fey, or something that wouldn't seem out of place in Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings'.

We asked Claire for her bio (she eventually admitted to...):

Claire: Hmm... what do I want to admit to?

I am a sixty something woman. My maths is not good, so whenever someone asks my age I have to do a quick calculation, hoping I have got the year right and it is past February. So mostly I just say sixty something.

I am English, I live within walking distance of the North Sea (about two hours walk). I love water in all its forms. I have a fascination for caves as well, though there are not many in this part of the world.

I have been married for a long time, with two children. Also two cats. They have all been a source of joy and inspiration.

Prompt for this week:

Claire's tanka are intense. Love, when skilfully portrayed, ranks among the finest themes for a tanka. Avoiding clichés, Claire infuses her verses with facts, capturing the ferocity of longing and love. Io, one of Jupiter's moons, has over 400 active volcanoes. That is a lot of fire there! I also wonder how many millions or billions of years ago it last rained on Venus. What wonderful use of facts. We'd love to know your thoughts on Claire's tanka.

Here's your prompt: get hold of a fact and see where it leads you. Mostly, have fun!

Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It really helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!

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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.

An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights here

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.

Please check out the LEARNING Archives.

New essays are up! https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/learning-archive

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