hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!
poet of the month: the FOUR EDITORS of Tanka Take Home
5th October - Firdaus Parvez Firdaus Parvez is an intense and sensitive poet. Her portrayal of human relationships will make you sit up. Notice the way she tells her story. She meticulously follows and believes in less is more. Notice the effective use of punctuation - particularly the comma in both the haibun.
I'm giving you not just one, but two of her beautiful poems. Enjoy!
First Cry
We walked in silence, he fidgeting with his tie, clearing his throat every now and then, wanting to say something perhaps, I trying to keep up with his stride, swallowing down disappointment, the distance between the clinic and us increasing, knowing it was our last chance.
dismantling
the wooden crib
piece by piece
I try to glue together
my broken heart
Years later, the jigsaw puzzle is missing a piece, I’m sprawled on the living room carpet searching for it. His presence fills the doorway, the white crescent of his smile lighting up the room. Our eyes meet and I just know.
a guava tree
lit up with jasmine blossoms
fragrant dawn
as I hold another’s baby close
its breath mingling with mine
Firdaus Parvez
Contemporary Haibun Online - August 2022
The Art of Extinction
I fold the square sheet of paper diagonally, pressing in the crease with my thumbnail. This is my first attempt at making a swan. Following the instructions on the origami YouTube video, I must have missed a step because the bird-like thing in my hand has its head facing the wrong way. The paper is too wilted to start over again so I put it aside, deciding it’s a dead swan.
nothing stirs
on the swamp water
for miles
an expanse of dirty green
and patterns of white plastic
Contemporary Haibun Online - April 2022
Bio:
Firdaus Parvez lives in Aligarh, a town close to New Delhi, India. She writes short stories, flash fiction, and poems about love and loss, family and relationships, stumbling across them in the folds of ordinary lives. She has a few published works both online and in print.
Challenge for this week:
Heart-stirring tanka prose from Firdaus Parvez. Write about human relationships - their ups and downs. Or, write about something you attempted and failed.
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 this theme too.
An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights
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.