TANKA TAKE HOME — 28 May 2025 Poet of the Month: Lafcadio

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

poet of the month: Lafcadio

Instead of using her real name, Lafcadio  adopted a pen name when she started writing on social media. She was a special education teacher but now works at home writing, editing, and proofreading medical textbooks and journal articles.

Lafcadio has written poetry for many years. In the last few years she discovered Japanese micropoetry.  So now she spends her time writing haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun.  Her work has been published in journals and anthologies. Some of her poetry has been nominated for Touchstone and Best of the Net awards. Lafcadio grew up in Florida and now enjoys the mountains and seasonal changes of Tennessee. She is an avid pluviophile.

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?

Lafcadio: I think the best advice to someone wanting to write and publish tanka is to read all the tanka you can by recognized poets. Sometimes the articles online about how to write tanka are confusing and contradictory but reading published tanka books by well-known poets is probably the best way. By knowing what an editor wants will help you write.  If I were an editor I would be looking for a well-written tanka that I can tell is honest and real.

6.

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?

Lafcadio: I do not show a lot of work in progress with people. Though recently I participated in the mentorship group sponsored by the Tanka Society of America. It was helpful to receive feedback from other poets.

We thank you very warmly Lafcadio for sharing your lovely poems. We are enjoying your poems this month!

late winter

the crow's feet

wrinkle

the smooth snow

with laughter

Editor's Choice, Moonbathing 28, Spring/Summer 2023

smooth stones...

grow me

a river 

in the palm 

of your hand

Moonbathing 25, Fall/Winter 2021

Challenge for this week:

I love the way both tanka move so smoothly from an object in nature to a physical sensation in a human. The crows' feet used artfully to mean either the crow's footprints in the snow or the laughter lines created while smiling. Grow me a river in the palm of your hand, following smooth stones- this suggests, to me, that the poet is asking their lover for a long relationship, one that lasts as long as it took the river to smooth out the stones. Simply lovely...

This week is open challenge. Write what you like; whatever moves you.

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. And remember – tanka, because of those two extra lines, lends itself most beautifully when revealing a story. And tanka prose is storytelling.

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. No tanka sequences.

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.