I was pleased today, to see that the poetry prompt for the #poemadayfeb event was the Tanka form of poetry. I have spent many years trying to perfect the writing of Haiku, and the similar style of Tanka, and am still trying to perfect them.
I suspect this will continue for the rest of my life, knowing that managing to write one good one, certainly does not mean you’ve ‘got it’! In my life, I think I’ve written a mere handful of fine Haiku, and I’m not sure I’ve every written a Tanka I would call fine …
But today, I am going to do my best at writing a good Tanka, because I’d like the poems I put up here to be all good poems, of various forms, and following the various given prompts for February 2019. A Tanka has a syllable count of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables, or fewer, and a Haiku has a syllable count of 5/7/5 syllables, or fewer. There is a lot more to these poetic forms, but that would be for another blog post …
This has been a wonderful month for me, I feel my poetry is really getting to a higher level, to some extent, and I am ever so grateful to Kathy Parker, Paul Kohn, and Laura Greaves for putting these words together for poets to use as prompts. The more I write poetry, the better I feel I am getting, and the more inspired I am feeling about my writing in general.
Yesterday I wrote my #poemadayfeb poem, and another poem, and the text for a picture book too, all in one inspired day. I don’t know if that picture book will ever become an actual book, but I like it, it’s a sweet little story about friendship, and I’m wishing I could draw well enough, to finish it off!
I’m going to have a bit of a go at doing illustrations for this picture book, just to see how it would look, and whether it might work. That’s a task for me, after I finish this blog post, by posting the Tanka I have now finished writing. It is based on what I heard this morning, and what I remember from other times. I’ve written it down here, and fiddled with it for about ten minutes, still not completely happy, but happier than I was, so it will have to do.
That’s the thing with writing, there’s still something else you might do to make it better, but editing has to stop somewhere if others are going to read your work, and having written that, here it is:
Tanka for the 18th of February, 2019
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Gentle breeze blowing,
wind chimes, and sparrow song,
bring peaceful moments,
before my husband brings home
a cacophony of sound …
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 