TANKA TAKE HOME - 22 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

ah the sound

of small waves breaking

each day

still bright enough

to follow a dream

Eye to Eye, Tanka Society of America 2023 Members’ Anthology

soft clouds

moving east to west

sand shifts

with a quiet mind

we welcome earth’s small changes

Take 5ive, 2023 Earth Day

a crimson candle

in your memory …

meditating, we see you

on the same star

that lights up your bed

Ribbons Spring/Summer 2024: Volume 20, Number 1

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

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TTH: Can you give any advice to someone wanting to write and publish tanka? As an editor what are you looking for in a tanka that makes it most likely to get published?

Xenia: Read plenty of tanka, from a variety of countries and, if possible, in more than one language.

Give yourself the freedom of not knowing in advance what you are going to write. From all your experiences and feelings, something will rise to the surface that wants to be expressed. Roll with that, even if you don’t know where it’s going. See what happens, let it settle and then, if it feels right, invite another element that can speak to it.

Another way to bring something to the surface is to respond to a poetry prompt or photo prompt and see what happens. Keep the same level of freshness and approach your writing free from any pre-conceived idea.

When your poem feels fresh to you, it will feel fresh to me too.

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:

Xenia draws upon her intensely personal experience of nature and her sensitive observation of nature’s forces and forms to reflect upon life and relationships. Her tanka are quietly contemplative.

We invite you to write about a cherished memory of a person or your observation of ‘earth’s small changes’.

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.