hosts: Firdaus Parvez, Kala Ramesh, Priti Aisola & Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
Introducing a new perspective to our Wednesday Feature!
poet of the month: Pamela A. Babusci
Once again, here are two more beautiful tanka for you this week!
not a single star
out of place
in the Milky Way . . .
the garden gate
left ajar all night
—Pamela A. Babusci
A Thousand Reasons 2009
black dahlias
moon-drenched
in the bedroom
we lie love-soaked
in flower nectar
—Pamela A. Babusci
Ribbons 2015
We had the pleasure of asking Pamela A. Babusci 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?
I would highly recommend to first read every tanka book that you can, one can find a lot of books at their public library. Read a lot first before writing. Then write, rewrite and rewrite their tanka until they feel they have written a good one. Rewriting and editing your tanka poems is vital before submitting for possible publication. Read them out loud to yourself, to see how they sound. Change words or line arrangements, to make your tanka as good as possible. Sometimes one word can alter your entire tanka poem.
Pamela is an internationally award-winning haiku/tanka & haiga artist. She loves to Sumi-e paint, write Japanese calligraphy, and abstract paint, makes jewelry, sculpts, and make collages. Her awards include the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Mainichi Haiku Award (Japan), First Place Tanka Yellow Moon Competition (Aust), First Place Kokako Tanka Competition (NZ), First Place Saigyo Tanka Competition (US), First Place Inaugural Tanka Festival (Japan), First Place (tanka) San Franciso International Contest, First Place Mt. Fuji Tanka Contest (Japan). She has illustrated several books, including Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards, Taboo Haiku, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka Volume 1, The Delicate Dance of Wings, Chasing the Sun: selected haiku from HNA 2007 and A Thousand Reasons. She was the logo artist for Haiku North America in New York City in 2003 and again in Winston-Salem in 2007. Pamela has collaborated in several art galleries in Rochester, NY with oil painters Larry DeKock and Jono Peterson, where she has written tanka to complement their paintings. She is the founder and editor of Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka, the first all-women’s international tanka journal. Her two tanka collections are A Thousand Reasons and A Solitary Woman.
Poetry and art have been an integral part of her existence since her early teenage years. She has a deep desire to be creative daily. It feeds her spirit and soul, gives meaning to her life, and will continue to be a driving force until she meets her creator.
You can also view Pamela’s haigaonline solo haiga exhibit as well as a collaborative haiga exhibit with Diane Dehler
Are you inspired?
Challenge for this week:
Pamela writes from her heart. Such honesty and simplicity in her words. This week let's dabble with all the facets of love: the inspiring, the fulfilling, or the unrequited. And remember - tanka, because of those two extra lines, lends itself most beautifully when revealing a story.
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 this theme too.
An essay on how to write tanka: Tanka Flights
PLEASE NOTE 1. Post only one poem at a time.
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.
the wind
combing the trees
autumn begins
the tangles of my hair
becoming bigger
I just went on eBay and found a "like-new" 2010 Microsoft Publisher disc for $0.99. It's amazing what is available for very cheap once the new "improved" version comes out on one of these programs. Publisher is powerful enough.
I've composed many haiga using this program on a small laptop while traveling abroad. Here's an example, published in 2009 on DailyHaiga. I took a photo of my abstract watercolor painting with an iPhone, adjusted the saturation with the free app that came with the phone and dumped the jpeg into the tablet via email. The border was made in Publisher as well. If you're already familiar with Microsoft Word, this program will be easy to learn.
I am not a…
I took this photo in one of our favorite places to hike locally. I probably edited the RAW photo in RAW Power and added the text in PicMonkey. I could have created a photo on the left- text on the right haiga but I wanted the words to be on the path, in spite of the challenges to keep it legible. I hope it worked.
Feedback welcome.
your fingers
running through my hair…
on days like this
I call myself a woman
utterly whole and complete
Here’s me experimenting. If I was a bug I’d be the worst shutterbug! Would appreciate feedback. (I’m still working on the tanka)