TANKA TAKE HOME – 26th April 2023 poet of the month – Rebecca Drouilhet

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

poet of the month: Rebecca Drouilhet

Biography: Rebecca Drouilhet is a retired registered nurse, author of two books, winner of numerous contest and awards. Her work has appeared in a vast majority of the top haiku and tanka journals. She lives an hour from New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Hattiesburg, MS, a culturally rich gumbo of Deep South Culture and cuisine. Playing with her large family and enjoying music and art occupy her days. She is currently a haiku moderator on Inkstone Poetry Forum.

Rebecca, thank you very much for taking the time to respond to our questions. Our readers will gain so much from your experiences. We look forward to reading your comments on the submissions here.

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TTH: Do you show your work in progress to anyone, or is it a solitary art that you keep close to your chest before letting it go for publishing?

I workshop a lot of my work on Inkstone Poetry Forum, but not all. Some pieces just come out whole. I have also learned to keep certain ideas close to my chest-especially those that are so broad and visionary that others might not understand them until they are more fully fleshed out or developed.

I do find the feedback of others incredibly useful in helping me to see my tanka the way other readers might perceive them. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to share my work and inspiration

Here are two beautiful tanka from Rebecca for us to enjoy.

1)

a spring breeze

lifting my hair

the touch  

of your fingertips

centers my desire

*Publication credits: Tanka Café in the Spring/Summer issue of Ribbons, Volume 17, Number 20.

2)

first breeze

of autumn

amid fading blossoms

a dragonfly

catches the last light

*Publication credits:

Ribbons, Fall 2021.

We end this month with the last of Rebecca's haunting poetry. Our deepest gratitude to her for sharing her work and thinking with us. These two lovely tanka are gentle reads. Desire and nature intertwine in the first one. And the second one is a goodbye of sorts, the ending of a season.

Challenge for the week:

Let's blur the lines between haiku and tanka... Please write a tanka using a kigo :). Try not to name the season. If your kigo is very local, then feel free to add an explanatory note so that we readers are enriched.

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.