English Original
if only
I could reach the stars…
the child in me
climbs the first rung of a ladder
that used to scrape the sky
First Place, The Poetry Society of Tennessee’s 62nd Annual Poetry Contest
Rebecca Drouilhet
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
但願
我可以碰觸到星星 ...
我心中的孩子
爬上曾經刮過天空
那個梯子的第一層級
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
但愿
我可以碰触到星星 ...
我心中的孩子
爬上曾经刮过天空
那个梯子的第一层级
Bio Sketch
Rebecca Drouilhet is a retired registered nurse who works as a poetry moderator. Her work has won awards, including a Sakura award in the 2012 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Contest and an Honorable mention in the same contest for 2017 as well as Editor's Choice awards and others. She enjoys reading, word games and spending time with her large family.
The following is the backstory to Rebecca's award-winning tanka that is included in her "Dreaming Room" essay, first published in Ribbons, 17:2, Spring/Summer 2021 and reprinted on NeverEnding Story, http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-poets-roving-thoughts-dreaming-room.html
ReplyDeleteChen-ou, who has won many international contests and awards for his tanka, helped me write my first tanka. It was a failed haiku about a blues singer standing on the street corner in New Orleans. He suggested that I add a couple of lines to a haiku that didn’t really want to be a haiku, and voila! My life as a tanka poet was born. Chen-ou continued to encourage my writing. Because of his comments comparing the following poem to Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1958 painting Ladder to the Moon, I was emboldened to enter it in the Tanka Time division of The Poetry Society of Tennessee’s 62nd Annual Poetry Contest, where it won first place:
if only
I could reach the stars …
the child in me
climbs the first rung of a ladder
that used to scrape the sky
Poetic imagination is the cure for our isolation on Earth
-- Chen-ou Liu
And my tanka below could be read as a prequel to Rebecca's:
Father wagging
his "obey me" finger
at ten-year-old me
in a dream, I climb
the ladder to the moon
Its own place: a mindscape of tanka, 2018