My Dear Friends/Readers:
Please join NeverEnding Story to expand the readership base for tanka by tweeting at least one tanka a day throughout the month of May. The hashtags for Tanka Poetry Month are #MayTanka and #NaTankaMo.
Please help spread the word about this celebration via your poetry blogs, websites, Facebook pages, and X accounts. And NeverEnding Story seeks the tanka that can bite and bite hard.
shooting after shooting,
what's the use of poetry
in daily life?
between finger and thumb my pen
tucked snug as a gun
Ribbons, Spring/Summer 2025
Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXIX: "stones and bullets"
a Gazan teen
threw stones that hit no one ...
smiling out loud
the soliders respond with a spray
of US-made bullets
What [tanka] can, must, and will always do for us: it complicates us, it doesn't "soothe."
--paraphrasing Jorie Graham
Trump Empire, Inc., XXVIII
think, feel and act
while they're still legal
chant after chant
no more DOGEy business
drop this small dick(tator)
Trump Empire, Inc., XXIX
the White House
posts the AI photo of Trump
dressed as the Pope
the lingering odor
of this Antichrist shit
FYI: L4 refers to DOGE, which stands for the "Department of Government Efficiency," while L5 is in response to Rolling Stone, Oct. 6 2024: Trump Reiterates He Wants to Be a "Dictator" for "One Day" at Wisconsin Rally.
This is our reply to Trumpocracy: to write tanka more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
Changing the world, ONE TANKA A DAY.
-- Chen-ou Liu paraphrasing Leonard Bernstein
The accepted tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and Twitter (You are welcome to follow Chen-ou on X at @ericcoliu; 6 Following and 4,781 Followers).
We read to know we're not alone. -- William Nicholson
The proper response to a poem is another poem. -- Phyllis Webb
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. -- Anaïs Nin
To conclude today's post, I would like share with you Emily Cullen's reflections, "Why reading and writing poems shouldn’t be considered a luxury in troubling times" (The Conversation: Academic rigour, journalistic flair, April 25, 2024)
The American poet Adrienne Rich once asked: “To say that a poet is responsive, responsible – what can that mean?” This question about poets bearing witness and being the “conscience” of their society is something I’ve pondered over the years...
In a world teeming with injustice, it is more urgent than ever to read (and write) poetry that engages with social realities and inequities. Poetry, as Audre Lorde memorably stated, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we can predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change”...
In our social media-driven era, where it often feels as if nuance is in jeopardy, it is timely to think about how poetry can embrace the political while not succumbing to the lure of rhetoric.
Successful poems evoke empathy in the reader and expand horizons of possibility. They make us feel, rather than preach at us. They remind us of our common humanity and our interconnectedness to the world.
Happy Reading and Writing throughout the Tanka Poetry Month
Chen-ou
FYI: For more about the reasons "why reading and writing poetry shouldn’t be considered a luxury in troubling times" and good examples of poetry , see To the Lighthouse: Poetry Is Not a Luxury
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