TANKA TAKE HOME — 29th April 2026 Featuring poet: Pravat Kumar Padhy

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

29th April 2026

poet of the month: Pravat Kumar Padhy

Contours of Silhouette

The red sun radiates a gentle warmth, and songs of nest-ward birds mingle with the muse of waves. Clouds float gently up in the sky, catching a glimpse of twilight.

On the shore, she collects small shells and pebbles to build her cozy home with care. As evening falls, she keeps her tiny doll inside, claps loudly, and promises to return tomorrow.

The mother fondly lifts her under the star-studded full moon sky. She smiles; godliness dwells in the dream-house of innocence.

a fallen flower

she tenderly picks

as dusk nears

why does this life shape

hastily so as a sandcastle   

Remembrance Anthology, South Asian Poets 2025 ( Ed. Suman Gujaral) 

Ensō 

The river flows down the mountain, across the plain, and finally into the Bay of Bengal. The world looks so magical. Through the breeze of time, the tender village girl witnesses many turns and twists in the flow of the stream. 

She gradually transcends into a woman, later a mother, and a grandmother. With her tributaries, meandering at turns, she leaves behind her wisdom and continues on her journey, finally merging with the vast ocean. 

a lapwing’s 

maiden voyage 

over the sacred river 

the old woman falls into silence 

with the last spoon of holy water

Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 35 March 2026 (Ed. Reid Hepworth)

It has been a month of beautiful poetry and thoughts. We thank Pravat Kumar Padhy warmly for sharing his poems and for his thoughtful responses to our questions.

About the poet:

Pravat Kumar Padhy, based in Bhubaneswar, India, obtained his Master of Science and a Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. He is a mainstream poet and a writer of Japanese short forms of poetry. His poem “How Beautiful” is included in the university-level undergraduate curriculum. He served as a panel judge of “The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems” and haibun and haiga editor, ‘Under the Bashō. ’ His tanka appeared in the “Kudo Resource Guide” at the University of California, Berkeley, and was put to rendition in the Musical Drama Performance, “Coming Home,” at the International Opera through Art Songs in Toronto, Canada. He introduced new forms of poetry: Hainka: a fusion of haiku and tanka,  Braided Haiku and  Micro-Haiga (One-word Haiku). His essays on haiku and tanka are featured in Indian Literature, Frogpond, Presence, Drifting SandS Haibun, The Wise Owl and Juxtapositions (forthcoming).

He is one of the jury members of “Wind on the Cherry Blossoms Haiku Project,  “Associazione Culturale” Rami d'Oro, Italy ( 2026).

Your Challenge this Week:

This week write about a journey, or coming full circle. Interpret it as you like. Let's see where this takes you.

Have fun!

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 of these themes as well.

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.