TANKA TAKE HOME — 8th October '25 Featuring poet: Marilyn Shoemaker Hazelton

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

Introducing a new perspective to our  Wednesday Feature!

October 8th, 2025

poet of the month: Marilyn Shoemaker Hazelton

how casually 

a brown bird catches

a butterfly 

in its beak

and flies away

tinywords Issue 11.12 

interrupting 

my self-criticism

a cardinal 

chirrups 

for her mate

tinywords Issue 15.1 

the shape 

of my sadness 

like a cloud 

drifting fraying, 

oh, but I love this life

tiny words Issue 13.3

Marilyn, we thank you warmly for sharing your poems and for your thoughtful responses to our questions.

Q3.

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

Marilyn: My tanka begin with observing what is around me. Because the word tanka means short song, I keep in mind that a tanka is a collaboration between music and meaning.

There is often a moment in writing tanka when words click into place.  It’s a physical feeling, as if a missing puzzle piece has been found.  Getting to that point, I let a draft sit for a day or more. Then, I might try new words, and/or reorganize lines. 

More about the poet:

Marilyn Shoemaker Hazelton is a poet and essayist. Living in diverse parts of the United States as well as Thailand, Hong Kong, Spain and France has sharpened her sense of the need for poetry in this world. As a teaching artist, she approaches poetry as a path for empathy, understanding, and awareness. As a veteran of the War in Southeast Asia, survivor of an abusive first marriage, and a bereaved parent, she believes that creative acts can lift us from despair. 

Currently, Marilyn lives and works in Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband of fifty years and two cats. Until recently, she was the editor and publisher of red lights, an international tanka journal. Her writing has appeared in Haiku, moonbathing, Skylark, Bright Stars, Take Five (volumes 2,3 4), The Sacred in Contemporary Haiku, Beyond the Grave, The Tanka Journal and tinywords. 

Your Challenge this Week:

Marilyn's tanka catch the little moments of wonder, of self-reflection/criticism, of lovely interruptions, and how life and everything around us is actually quite beautiful and should be savoured. Let us know your thoughts on these poems. This week step outside: into your garden, your courtyard, the street, or anywhere else, just not inside the walls of your room. Now look for your poem. Write. Read. Enjoy!

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.