Welcome to the Tanka Tuesday Poetry Recap featuring the work of poets from around the globe. If you would like to participate in this challenge, you can learn the rules in the menu item called Colleen’s Weekly Tanka Tuesday Guidelines.

Congratulations, and many thanks to all the participants! Please visit the challenge post comments HERE, where you’ll find the links to everyone’s poetry. Stop by and say hello! ❤

The Poet of the Week and Honorable Mention Poets will be published in the 2019 Poet of the Week Anthology, which everyone will be able to grab as a FREE PDF in January 2020.

Each week, I like to highlight a poet who I call the Poet of the Week, who has shared an exceptional message, or shown impassioned creativity through words or form. Poetry is all about perception, so don’t be shocked if you don’t feel the same way about a poem that I do.

This week, I’ve chosen Ritu Bhathal as the Poet of the Week for her Tanka poem featured below. The first time I read this poem, I immediately noticed the last line. What a surprise! Ritu mirrors the dark and light found in all of us with. I like the play on words because it was so unexpected. This Tanka can also be read forward and backward – intensifying the meaning of her words.

Not sure how to write a Tanka poem? Find out more HERE and in this article on the Pen & the Pad.

Clear & Nature, #Tanka

Relax, Read, Book, Rest, Enjoy — Pixabay Image

It isn't simple
Judging someone's character
On a first meeting
Never judge a book, they say
By cover, more lies within

Kerfe Roig’s Haibun/Tanka is a real stunner. The prose part of this Haibun transports the reader on a magical trip. Kerfe employs her artwork in every poem she writes. The image grid below compliments her prose and the Tanka.

Remember, when writing a Haibun, the poetry should never repeat, quote, or explain the prose. The Tanka should reflect a different aspect of the prose by sharing another narrative as a microburst of detail.

I also love her creative word play. Check out: “rainbowed,” which relates to her word imagery and the grid she constructed.

AUGUST (2019), #Haibun #Tanka

Is it the sky I seize when my hand reaches out to touch the storm of rain? Or do the heavens remain behind the veil, rainbowed and unclouded, waiting for the thunderings of the gods to echo into quietude as they follow the flashes of light to the edge of the horizon?

Everything around me is covered with drops of liquid light.

Gaia, drunk with the season’s retreat, builds an improvised framework out of the movements of the moon.

I look for the line
between now and again, where
flower becomes seed–

All is stillness, dense, restless–
leaves shiver, rattled by wind.

See you for tomorrow’s challenge!

Published by Colleen M. Chesebro

An avid reader, Colleen M. Chesebro rekindled her love of writing poetry after years spent working in the accounting industry. These days, she loves crafting syllabic poetry, flash fiction, and creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to poetry books, Chesebro’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She’s an avid supporter of her writing community on Word Craft Poetry.com by organizing and sponsoring a weekly syllabic poetry challenge, called #TankaTuesday, where participants experiment with traditional and current forms of Japanese and American syllabic poetry. Chesebro is an assistant editor of The Congress of the Rough Writers Flash Fiction Anthology & Gitty Up Press, a micro-press founded by Charli Mills and Carrot Ranch. In January 2022, Colleen founded Unicorn Cats Publishing Services to assist poets and authors in creating eBooks and print books for publication. In addition, she creates affordable book covers for Kindle and print books. Chesebro lives in the house of her dreams in mid-Michigan surrounded by the Great Lakes with her husband and two (unicorn) cats, Chloe & Sophie. View more posts