hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!
May 8, 2024
poet of the month: Beverley George
after you ring off
I go to find the moon --
like you
it's north of here
and just as far away
Beverley George
" to find the moon" from the second line of this tanka was chosen by editor
Cathy Drinkwater Better as the title of The Tanka Society of America 2004 Members' Anthology.
This tanka was later published in " A Temple Bell Sounds" Eucalypt 2017
you say my tanka book
lies in your linen press
that you read one or two
with each clean sheet you take
each fresh cloth for your table
Beverley George
1st prize The Saigyo Awards 2010
We are deeply grateful to Beverley George for sharing her beautiful poems with us.
Bio-note: Beverley George is a Writing Fellow of The Fellowship of Australian Writers and past editor of Yellow Moon 9-20, 2000-2006 poetry journal which included tanka. She is the founding editor of Eucalypt: a Tanka Journal, Australia's first poetry journal dedicated to tanka. She edited issues 1-21, (2006-16) before passing editorship to Julie Thorndyke. In addition, she edited issues of Windfall Australian Haiku issues 1-10, 2013-2022.
Beverley was president of the Australian Haiku Society 2006-10. She presented papers at the 3rd Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in Matsuyama, Japan 2007 and at the 6th International Tanka Festival, Tokyo, Japan 2009. She also conducted a tanka workshop at Haiku Aotearoa 3 Katikati, New Zealand in 2012.
In 2009 she convened the four-day 4th Haiku Pacific Rim with delegates from six countries attending at Terrigal, Australia.
Her books of tanka poetry include:
empty garden; Tanka by Beverley George
Sydney, Yellow Moon, 2006, reprinted 2013
This Pinging Hail
Eucalypt 2012
Only in Silence
Tanka by Beverley George; Translated by Aya Yuhki
Pearl Beach, Kenilworth Road 2017
A Shared Umbrella
the responsive tanka and rengay of Beverley George & David Terelinck
Eucalypt 2016
Grevillea & Wonga Vine; Australian Tanka of Place
edited by Beverley George and David Terelinck
Eucalypt, 2011
wind through the wheatfields
Tanka by Beverley George writing with friends
Eucalypt, 2012
A Temple Bell Sounds; 108 tanka from the first twenty-one issues of Eucalypt: a tanka journal, selected by the journal’s founding editor Beverley George, Eucalypt 2017
A few thoughts on Beverley's tanka:
After I read the first tanka, its mood of understated longing and gentle melancholy stayed with me for a while. When distance (not always physical), that seems untraversable, separates us from another, who we care for deeply, the sadness lingers for a while. In simple words and through the image of the ‘far away’ moon, this has been conveyed beautifully in simple words and through the familiar image of the ‘far away’ moon.
The tone of the second tanka is informal and conversational. It gives us a glimmering of insight into the relationship between the poet-narrator and the reader of her tanka. It is interesting that her tanka book lies in the linen press of this reader, who reads ‘one or two’ with ‘each clean sheet’ and ‘each fresh [table] cloth that they take as and when the need arises. There is a decorous intimacy about this gesture and what is suggested subtly is this: that the poet’s tanka are as fresh and pleasing as the fresh and fragrant bed and table linen.
While reading this tanka, I had another thought: while the poet-narrator cannot be a part of the certain simple cosy rituals of their household, at least her book is an integral part of it.
Prompt for this week:
Use familiar, homely images to write tanka about a special bond that you share with a certain person or a special feeling that you have for a person who is ‘far away’ from you (the distance needn’t be a physical one). This bond or feeling may or may not be a romantic one.
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.
Please check out the LEARNING Archives.
New essays are up! https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/learning-archive
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