TANKA TAKE HOME: 22nd May, 2024 Beverley George - poet of the month

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

May 22, 2024

poet of the month: Beverley George

night flight to Japan . . .

I go to sleep in autumn

wake up in spring

trade leaf fall for blossom drift,

picnic under dark-limbed trees

Eucalypt A Tanka Journal Issue 23, 2017

lockdown loneliness

a rainbow lorikeet lands

on the sunny table

peers boldly over the rim

into my coffee cup

Eucalypt A Tanka Journal Issue 31, 2021

We are deeply grateful to Beverley George for sharing her beautiful poems with us.

Bio-note: Beverley George is a Writing Fellow of The Fellowship of Australian Writers and past editor of Yellow Moon 9-20, 2000-2006 poetry journal which included tanka. She is the founding editor of Eucalypt: a Tanka Journal, Australia's first poetry journal dedicated to tanka. She edited issues 1-21, (2006-16) before passing editorship to Julie Thorndyke. In addition, she edited issues of Windfall Australian Haiku issues 1-10, 2013-2022.

Beverley was president of the Australian Haiku Society 2006-10. She presented papers at the 3rd Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in Matsuyama, Japan 2007 and at the 6th International Tanka Festival, Tokyo, Japan 2009. She also conducted a tanka workshop at Haiku Aotearoa 3 Katikati, New Zealand in 2012.

In 2009 she convened the four-day 4th Haiku Pacific Rim with delegates from six countries attending at Terrigal, Australia.

Her books of tanka poetry include:

empty garden; Tanka by Beverley George 

Sydney, Yellow Moon, 2006, reprinted 2013

This Pinging Hail

Eucalypt 2012

Only in Silence

Tanka by Beverley George; Translated by Aya Yuhki

Pearl Beach, Kenilworth Road 2017

A Shared Umbrella

the responsive tanka and rengay of Beverley George & David Terelinck

Eucalypt 2016

Grevillea & Wonga Vine; Australian Tanka of Place

edited by Beverley George and David Terelinck

Eucalypt, 2011

wind through the wheatfields

Tanka by Beverley George writing with friends

Eucalypt, 2012

A Temple Bell Sounds; 108 tanka from the first twenty-one issues of Eucalypt: a tanka journal, selected by the journal’s founding editor Beverley George, Eucalypt 2017

Prompt for this week: In Beverley's tanka shared above the images are striking and the inherent music discernible and pleasing. The repetition of the 'l' sound in the second tanka gives it a soft and soothing mood. Inspired by her tanka, can you make your tanka sing or flow smoothly? Of course, based on your theme, your tanka can have a heavier or jagged rhythm too.

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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