TANKA TAKE HOME — 3rd December '25 Featuring poet: Michele L. Harvey

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

3rd December, 2025

poet of the month: Michele L. Harvey

again and again 

that deep dive into nothingness… 

unfathomable 

that the pearl of my life 

is beyond definition 

Tanka Café Fall 2019 

Winner Readers’ Choice 

a fall cricket 

sings alone on the porch 

I too, wonder 

about being born too late 

or too soon

Skylark, Winter 2015

be still 

and you may hear the heartbeat 

of this world… 

before birth, after death 

unfolding like the tide

tankathursday March 31st, 2022 prompt: Music

Facing

We didn’t know why there was a traffic jam. The Brooklyn Bridge was always busy this time of day. Besides, we were on our bikes and it was a beautiful autumn afternoon…

facing

a cloudless sky

above the river

a lone speck atop the span

deciding to jump

Modern English Tanka, Winter 2007

Michele, we thank you warmly for sharing your poems and for your thoughtful responses to our questions.

Q1.

TTH: Do you come from a literary background? What writers did you enjoy reading as a  child? Did you write as a child?

Michele: No I did not come from a literary background but my library card was a prized  possession, taking me anywhere the mind could go. 

Q2.

TTH: How did you get started as a poet? What was it about tanka that inspired you to  embrace this ancient form of poetry? In short, why do you keep writing tanka. 

Michele: In grade school I was introduced to Japanese Haiku and was immediately drawn to its  nature focus and enchanted by its brevity, inner juxtaposition and its surprise AHA  moment. I was unaware that there was a contemporary haiku & tanka world until my  first computer in early 2005. Online I found Tanka & the contemporary Japanese Short  form poetry on Jane Reichhold’s forums and Robert Wilson’s Yahoo forums, reading,  writing & getting encouragement, inspiration & helpful feedback from many other  writers.  

More about the poet:

Michele's career has been as a professional landscape artist, painting in both oil & watercolor since 1976, in New York, USA. 

Your Challenge this Week!

I grouped these poems together because they're about questioning life. Michele dives deep into it. We'd love your thoughts on the poems. This week let's go outside and find the tiniest creature, now connect with it in your poems. Don't take the easy route and write about a butterfly! Let's have some 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.