Cool Announcement: Celebrate Tanka Poetry Month with NeverEnding Story

Changing the world one tanka at a time.  Chen-ou Liu

One poem lights up another. W.B. Yeats

My Dear Friends:

Please join NeverEnding Story to expand the tanka readership base through writing or tweeting  at least one tanka a day for the month of May:

on the windowsill

two canaries singing

to each other

I tweet and retweet

NeverEnding Story

Below is a relevant excerpt from Angela Leuck's article, titled "Tanka and the Literary Mainstream: Are we 'there' yet?" ("Book Review Editor's Message," Ribbons, 10:1, Winter 2014, p. 74):

An alternative approach is suggested by Chen-ou Liu, author of the blog, "NeverEnding Story." In his June 2012 Lynx interview with Jane Reichhold,2 Liu describes the current relationship between the haiku/tanka community and the literary mainstream in terms of "an asymmetric power relationship." He believes a "top down" approach will not work; i.e., trying to change the perceptions of those in the mainstream. Rather, Liu supports a "bottom up" approach, which for him means consolidating and expanding the readership base for tanka through online publishing and social networking sites. He argues:

If there are more people who love reading/writing haiku and tanka, the mainstream poetry world will eventually open their main gate to haiku and tanka poets. This approach to reversing the asymmetric power relationship has been demonstrated in the case of the power transfer from traditional media, such as news papers, TV, and books, to online and social media.

Liu also says that with the increasingly hectic nature of contemporary society, there will be more interest in shorter poetry, as people have less time and attention, but are still seeking to read something meaningful. He notes that both haiku and tanka have become more and more popular on Tweeter ....

Please help spread the word about this celebration via your poetry blogs, websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts. Many thanks for your time and help.

And look forward to reading your tanka (see 2015 anthology submission guidelines for tanka )

Chen-ou

Note:  In addition to being translated into Chinese and published on NeverEnding Story, the accepted haiku and tanka will be tweeted and re-tweeted by  @storyhaikutanka (NeverEnding Story's Tweeter account: following: 8, followers: 464) and @ericcoliu (Chen-ou Liu's Tweeter account: following: 7, followers: 1,763) respectively to reach a larger readership.