Double Exposure Photography and Tanka. All photos and tanka copyright by Janet Keen..

              egret  hunt fresh fish 

                           paddle boarders hunt fresh waves

                so much time hunting 

             do they ever stop, take stock

            and practise satisfaction 

Janet Keen New Zealand. 

Tanka, the 5-line lyric poem of Japan is quickly becoming popular in the English-language poetry community. 

Like haiku, its shorter cousin, tanka usually is well-grounded in concrete images but also is infused with a lyric intensity and intimacy that comes from the direct expression of emotions, as well as from implication, suggestion, and nuance. 

If you already write haiku and have ever wanted to add commentary to your verses, tanka is the form for you! 

The tanka aesthetic is broad and all-encompassing. 

You can write on virtually any subject and express your thoughts and feelings explicitly.

    

1. Think of one or two simple images from a moment you have experienced and describe them in concrete terms -- what you have seen, tasted, touched, smelled, or heard. 

Write the description in two or three lines. 

As an  example:

 an egret staring at me

 me staring back

2. Reflect on how you felt or what you were thinking when you experienced this moment or perhaps later when you had time to think about it.

    Regarding the moment described above, you could think  about how often  you  have watched and photographed egrets. 

In fact, they even could be said to be a defining part of your  life.

3. Describe these feelings or thoughts in the remaining two or three lines:

 wondering for years

 what would be

 my life's defining moment

4. Combine all five lines:

 an egret staring at me

 me staring back

 wondering for years

 what would be

 my life's defining moment

5. Consider turning the third line of your poem into a pivot line, that is, a line that refers both to the top two lines as well as to the bottom two lines, so that either way they make sense grammatically. 

To do that, you may have to switch lines around.

    Here's a verse with the lines reordered to create a pivoting third line:

 wondering for years

 what would be

 my life's defining moment

 an egret staring at me

 me staring back

    To test the pivot line, divide the poem into two three-liners and see if each makes sense:

  wondering for years

  what would be

  my life's defining moment

  my life's defining moment

  an egret staring at me

  me staring back

6. Think about the form or structure of your verse. 

In Japan, tanka is often written in one line with segments consisting of 5-7-5-7-7 sound-symbols or syllables. 

Some people write English tanka in five lines with 5-7-5-7-7 syllable to approximate the Japanese model. You may wish to try writing tanka in this way. 

But Japanese syllables are shorter than English language syllables, resulting in shorter poems even though the syllable count is the same. 

To approximate the Japanese model, some poets use approximately 20-22 syllables and a short-long-short-long-long structure or even just a free form structure using five lines.

 You may wish to experiment with all these approaches. My egret verse is free form.

7. Decide where capitalization and punctuation may be needed, if at all. 

Tanka verses normally are not considered full sentences, and the first word in line 1 usually is not capitalized, nor is the last line end-stopped with a period. 

The idea is to keep the verse open and a bit fragmented or incomplete to encourage the reader to finish the verse in his or her imagination. 

Internal punctuation, while adding clarification, can stop the pivot line from working both up and down. A colon could be added without disenabling the pivot:

 wondering for years

 what would be

 my life's defining moment:

 an egret staring at me

 me staring back

I decided to use indentation instead:

 wondering for years

 what would be

 my life's defining moment

    an egret staring at me

       me staring back

A few final tips before you write your first verse: 

• Tanka verses normally do not have titles, unless they are in a "tanka sequence" or "tanka string."
• Commentary can be separate from the concrete images or woven into them.
•  Even though commentary is fine, it's a good policy -- as in any fine poetry -- to "show rather than tell."

    This is a very simplified quick start guide to 
writing tanka. 

The more you write tanka and read other’s verses, you will find many variations to the approach presented here. 

Enjoy the form and remember to share your verses 
with others! 

 A great place to start is with a tanka society such as 

the Tanka Society of America or any of the other 

organizations coming into existence around the 

globe. 

                                                       

                                     
                                               daisies glow amongst
                               crumbling lead cracked paintwork in
                                taranaki  town twilight 
                               do ghosts in forgotten shacks
                               whisper scandals to the tainted