TANKA TAKE HOME — 5th November '25 Featuring poet: Reid Hepworth

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

November 5th, 2025

poet of the month: Reid Hepworth

Reid, 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? 

RH:

No, I don’t come from a literary background, but my parents were both ardent readers and modelled not only the importance of reading, but also reading for the sheer pleasure of it. 

My earliest memories of my mum, were of her sitting on the couch, book in hand. She read at least one book per day, which was incredibly inspiring. She read mostly novels and had a passion for mysteries. My father, on the other hand, was a fan of spy/espionage novels and non-fiction. He worked in television, was a creative soul, an avid storyteller and enjoyed reading to my brother and I (almost as much as we enjoyed listening to him).

In my family any gift giving occasion started with a book. This may have been a tactical decision on the part of my parents, but starting the day with a book helped keep my brother and I quiet in the morning and permitted my parents to stay in bed a little longer! To this day, I think giving children books and reading to them is the best way to foster lifelong learners. 

Some of my childhood faves were:  Laura Ingalls Wilder, Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak. I also loved the classics: EB White, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies and Jack London. As a teen, I came to appreciate writers such as Camus, Irving, Sartre and Yukio Mishima. I’m not sure how much I understood, but I pretty much read everything I could get my hands on. Books were my friends and my solace in trying times.

I started writing when I was eight years old. I was inspired to carry a notebook and write down my thoughts and observances after reading the novel, Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. My parents were supportive of my early writing attempts and would sit quietly listening to me read my stories aloud. I’m sure they thought it was just a phase and would stop when I found something better to do! Little did they know.

2.

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. 

RH:

Poetry was not on my dance card growing up. Other than my grandfather reciting limericks on whim, I wasn’t really exposed to poetry until my late teens and early 20’s, when I was playing and writing lyrics in a band and working in a bookshop. On a whim I took a poetry course at the Kootenay School of Writing, facilitated by the poet, Tom Wayman. Wayman was supportive and encouraging, which spurred me on. Later I found Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, bp nichol, George Bowering…Canadian poets, followed by some American poets: Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Mary Oliver and many others. Each quite different, but equally enjoyable. At no point did I consider myself a poet. I thought I was going to be a novelist. 

In the late 1990’s, my partner gifted me with Seeds From a Birch Tree, by Clark Strand. I would say that Strand’s book planted a seed in me. I’m a minimalist at heart, so writing a poem in three lines seemed appropriate to me. The fact that I could write in nature about nature was quite tantalizing. 

I learned about tanka and tanka-bun when I joined Triveni Haiku India. I am unsure if I would have made the leap if I hadn’t had the connection with Kala Ramesh, the support from the editorial team, and the amazing feedback from other members. 

The appeal to tanka, for me, is those two extra lines!  I enjoy the emotional narrative (for lack of a better term) that 5 lines can provide. I also love the history of tanka, the musical landscape it affords. As well, I have had a love affair with simile and metaphor for as long as I can remember, so to me, tanka is quite appealing. I continue to write tanka because I love it. Plain and simple.

More about the poet:

Background:

Reid Hepworth has been enamoured with words and storytelling since childhood. Even though being a writer was a lifelong goal, she didn’t start writing haikai poetry until late 2021. Once she started on the haikai path, she couldn’t stop. 

Since then Reid has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Touchstone Awards. She has published a book with Adisakrit Publishing - loss is a river (2024) and her second book again with Adisakrit Publication, the improbability of sea monkeys (is upcoming) 2025. Her work appears in journals and anthologies worldwide. Reid is the current associate editor at Drifting Sands Haibun and a past associate editor of The Haibun Gallery at Triveni Haiku India. 

Reid spent most of her life on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada and now splits her time between Georgian Bay, Ontario and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. 

Now for Reid's tanka and tanka-prose:

the fledglings

with their incessant chatter

gone now, 

and I, as close to alone 

as I’ve ever been

Quail Eggs, Issue 2 (September 2025)

roads end

when the smallest things

we take for granted

are now beyond our reach

will we cry for all we’ve lost

Ribbons, Volume 19, Number 3 (Fall 2023) from Shrinking Horizons, a tanka sequence collaboration with Sangita Kalarickal - Pushcart Prize nomination.

Triggers

Without warning, they niggle to the surface. Tiny, transient flickers of memory that most would have forgotten years ago.

every house

on the street lit up

except ours

how easy it is

to turn a blind eye

At the time, I told myself to remember every little detail so that I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes. NEVER FORGET…that was my mantra. Now all that I want to do is forget.

ashes

from a burning cigarette

smoulder…

the trail of casualties

you’ve left behind

Ribbons, Spring/Summer 2024, Volume 20, Number 1, Pushcart Prize nominated

Your Challenge this Week:

We'd love to know your thoughts on Reid's beautiful poems. To keep your tanka "plain and simple" is the toughest thing to do. In this week's examples, Reid has done it most touchingly. Have you ever tried to delete expressions that have 'cluttered' up the page or the reader's mind?

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

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.

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.