hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!
March 6, 2024
poet of the month: Kathabela Wilson
inside the body
of a bird the song
opens
in my life how can there be
a summer's end
tinywords 16.2
the crow
jumps on both feet
branch to branch
I wish for the courage
of unexplainable decisions
Skylark 2018
there are no words
that make this sound
the rusty hinge
of the door that opens
between worlds
Moongarlic; May, 2016
We are deeply grateful to Kathabela Wilson for sharing her beautiful work and thoughts with us.
Bio note: Kathabela Wilson was born into a poetic family. Her father a poet and writer, journalist, read her The Great Poems of the English Language as bedtime stories. Her Maltese mother, born in Cairo in an international community, spoke 5 languages was a creative artist. Her first poem at 5 years old is memorable, and carries her sense of wonder: 'Oh the moon, oh the sun oh the stars'. She found Asian poems in her childhood books, fell in love, and later traveled to Japan and other Asian countries about 10 times, with her mathematician flute player husband Rick Wilson, developing strong ties and inspiration. He continues to accompany her in all performances, in the spirit of tanka as a little song. She "realized" she was writing tanka in about 2010, and has been deeply in love ever since. She has published a tanka chapbook, and shared tanka over the years in many international journals. She traveled to Japan in 2018 to receive the First Place Fujisan Taisho award in person. She is Secretary for Tanka Society of America for 8 years, loving the community of poets. She founded and leads her own group of "Poets on Site" since 2008.
1.
TTH: Do you come from a literary background? What writers did you enjoy reading as a child? Did you write as a child?
Kathabela: My father was a sensitive lyrical poet, who read me the classic poems of the English language before I could read! I still have the original book he read from — the big Norton edition of Great Poems of the English Language. I heard Keats, Shelly, Whitman, and Yeats and hundreds of others before I started school! My artistic mother gave him that book and encouraged him all along. I loved it all. He encouraged me and I felt the inheritance. I especially loved Keats and Yeats. I wrote my first poem at age 5. It is a moment I remember vividly as a personal experience. It did not mimic rhymes or what I read. It really was an original expression of wonder. I have written since then without interruption, as complex and tumultuous as life can be, poetry was always my strength, core identity and happiness.
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?
Kathabela: When I encountered and identified tanka as a form it felt natural. I loved the little song of it. Mariko Kitakubo came to our Asian museum in Pasadena where we live and performed. We became immediate friends and I started writing! I loved the freedom within a small space, the emotional quality, and lyrical, musical qualities. Fortunately traveling to Japan with my husband over the years about 10 times to mathematical conferences deepened my tanka experience in the Japanese world and inspired me further, developing more friendships and feeling at home there. Our last visit, when I received the Fujisan prize, I saw tanka performed by a singer in the most ancient ceremonial style. It was unforgettably powerful.
A few reflections:
Enjoy the simple beauty and gentle optimism of the first tanka.
In the second tanka, watching a crow jump with natural ease ‘from branch to branch’ ‘on both feet’, the poet-narrator wishes ‘for the courage / of unexplainable decisions’. To be able ‘jump’ into decisions that cannot be explained rationally, perhaps even to oneself, requires courage. The image of the crow followed by this inner reflection comes as a mild and interesting surprise for the reader.
Words have their limitations. They cannot describe certain kinds of experiences that cannot only be felt or understood intuitively. They cannot imitate or mimic certain sounds: ‘the rusty hinge / of the door that opens / between worlds’. The reader wonders about these worlds. What do they contain? What do they symbolize? And why has the hinge of the door been allowed to rust? Does ‘rust’ signify the infrequent use of one’s courage or imagination — both of which enable one to experience the extraordinary, the unique, in the midst of the commonplace or the ordinary. Or, does 'rust' signify that most people do not use the door that leads to an unfamiliar world where can either get lost/be bewildered, or experience something wonderful and transforming.
Prompt for this week:
Write tanka around the theme of quiet optimism. Or centered around a certain sound that triggers an inner reflection.
Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It really helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!
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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.
An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights here
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.
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