TANKA TAKE HOME - 8 January, 2025 | poet of the month – Xenia Tran

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

Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!

poet of the month: Xenia Tran

all is silent

where the dog pauses

eyes full of love

in the shadows of a rock

moss flows and flows

Dance Into the World, Tanka Society of America Twentieth Anniversary Anthology

shenandoah

a shaman plays

the piano

past the sorrows, new rivers

flow into this world

Ribbons, Fall 2021, Volume 17, Number 3

We had the pleasure of asking Xenia a few questions, and she graciously took the time to answer them.

Q3

TTH: How do you develop a tanka? Please guide us through the stages of a poem.

Xenia Tran: In the early days, I carried a notebook with me and when something on a walk caught my eye, or the presence of a thought walking with me caught my ear, I would write it down and write the first draft of a poem when I got home, allowing plenty of space for my intuition to come through and add another dimension. I would then leave it alone for a few days, before revisiting the poem to see whether it still sounded and felt right, making some edits where appropriate.

These days, I am more fully present on each walk and don’t write anything down. When I am back home and feel like writing, I pick up my pen and see where it takes me. I often have no idea what I am about to write and the poems that flow from this openness frequently surprise me. I much prefer writing this way now, as it is more fun and refreshing as a process without the constraints of an earlier ‘idea’ for a poem. Sometimes the poem wants to be a tanka sequence or tanka prose, rather than a single poem. I still leave what I’ve written alone for a few days and only make edits when a deeper thought flows forth from the re-reading.

Brief Bio:

Xenia Tran is a poet, artist and photographer who lives in the Scottish Highlands with her husband and their adopted senior border collie Bria. Originally from The Netherlands, she writes in Dutch and English, and her work regularly features in calendars, journals, and anthologies.

With an academic background in language and applied linguistics, she later undertook postgraduate studies in creative writing, where her interest in Japanese poetry forms was born.  

She loves combining her images and reflections in photo haiku and tanka art and enjoys writing haiku, haibun, tanka, tanka sequences (both solo and collaborative pieces) and tanka prose.

She blogs at www.tranature.com and has published two full-length collections: Sharing Our Horizon (2018), in aid of animal rehoming charities, and Between Heather and Grass (2019), in aid of Children with Cancer UK and animal rehoming charities.

Prompt for this week:

The sibilance in the first tanka is done with disarming ease. In the upper verse the repetition of the ‘s’ sounds evokes a mood of quiet mystery. And in L 5 it creates an atmosphere of reassurance – ‘in the shadows of a rock / moss flows and flows’. We are given a comforting message about the resurgence of life. This is in contrast with ‘all is silent / where the dog pauses / eyes full of love’. Is the dog paying homage to a beloved master who is no more? This made me pause and wonder.

The interplay of the repetition of ‘s’ sounds with ‘l’ sounds gives a tanka its appealing cadence.

The second tanka also focuses on the continuance of life through this image: ‘past the sorrows, new rivers / flow into this world’. Everything in the world is in a state of flux, of change. Sorrows and joys come and go. Hence, while one can’t wish away the sorrows, one can turn one’s gaze towards all those things that bring a message of hope: ‘new rivers’ emerging and flowing; new songs being composed and sung or played on an instrument.

The opening word ‘shenandoah’ is very rich in meaning and references. The use of a multi-layered word as L 1 makes a reading of this tanka an educative and deeply satisfying experience. I had to google ‘shenandoah’ and discovered the history, the geography, the legend, the songs it alludes to. Shenandoah was once a great lake in the mountains of Virginia. Its most captivating translation is ‘Beautiful, Daughter of the Stars’. In America Shenandoah figures in several songs and has been well-celebrated in music.

We invite you to write about change, transience and the continuance of life.

Give this idea 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.

PLEASE NOTE:

1. Post only one poem at a time.

2. Only two 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 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in haikuKATHA monthly magazine.