TANKA TAKE HOME: 24th July 2024 - Jenny Ward Angyal- poet of the month

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

July 24, 2024

poet of the month: Jenny Ward Angyal

redbud blossoms

on a broken branch—

the creek

that drains the clearcut

runs also in my veins

~First Place, Mandy’s Pages

‘Climate Change: The Burning Issue’ Contest 2020

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

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.

Jenny: The beauty of tanka is that its five short lines can do so many different things. For such a short form, it is remarkably flexible, and there are very many fine contemporary practitioners, each one writing out of his or her own vision. So I’m not sure it’s meaningful to pick ‘favourites.’

After I discovered tanka about fourteen years ago, I soon transitioned to writing this form almost exclusively. I don’t yet feel that I have exhausted the possibilities of tanka, although I do also write some haiku. I am currently most interested in expanding the reach of tanka by using them in longer works: tanka-prose and tanka sets or sequences. Combining tanka with prose allows me to explore ideas and stories that don’t lend themselves well to poetry, while the embedded tanka provide a reflective counterpoint. When combined in sets or sequences, tanka exhibit a surprising synergy, and the whole emerges as more than the sum of its parts. Both strategies provide scope to explore themes larger than five lines alone can handle.

To tell you about the books I’ve enjoyed would take months. Or decades. I have too many books. So I will pick, almost at random, three recent reads that I have found meaningful. The Language of Loss, by Debbie Strange, for showing with poignancy and grace how tanka and haiku can talk to each other. The Horizon Waits, by Larry Kimmel, for exploring—mostly through cherita--what it means to be (like me) ‘an old poet / leaking into eternity.’ And Hedgerows, by Joy McCall, for inspiring me to try my hand at deliberately writing tanka in sets of five.

About Jenny:

Jenny Ward Angyal spent her childhood wandering the woods and fields of rural Connecticut, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse and composed her first poem at the age of five. She spent many years studying and writing about biology, and many more teaching nonverbal children how to communicate. She now lives with her husband and one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in central North Carolina. She has two sons and three grandchildren.

Jenny has written tanka since 2008. Her tanka, haiku, tanka-prose and haibun have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. She is the author of five tanka collections: Moonlight on Water, Only the Dance, Earthbound, The Wind Harp, and Spellbound. She is also co-author (with Joy McCall & Claire Everett) of Beetles & Stars: Tanka Triptychs.  All her books are available on Amazon.

Jenny co-edited (with Susan Constable) the Tanka Society of America’s 2016 Members’ Anthology, Ripples in the Sand. She served for over five years as Reviews and Features Editor of Skylark: A Tanka Journal and for two years as Tanka Editor of Under the Bashō. She is currently a Global Moderator of Inkstone Poetry Forum.

Prompt for this week:

Jenny's tanka poignantly explores our connection with nature, in view of the unfavourable changes happening around us. For this week's challenge, write about the CHANGE you observe in your surroundings. How is it affecting life in your city, town, or village? Share your observations. You may also write outside the prompt if you wish.

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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