English Original
floating inside
my mother's womb
for nine months —
how little she
understood me
Honorable Mention, Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Contest, 2026
Pamela A. Babusci
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
漂浮
在我母親的子宮裡
九個月之久—
她對我是多麼地
不了解啊
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
漂浮
在我母亲的子宫里
九个月之久—
她对我是多么地
不了解啊
Bio Sketch
Pamela A. Babusci is an internationally award winning haiku, tanka poet and haiga artist. Some of her awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Yellow Moon Competition (Aust) tanka category, First Place Kokako Tanka Competition,(NZ) First Place Saigyo Tanka Awards (US), Basho Festival Haiku Contests (Japan). Pamela has illustrated several books, including: Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards, Taboo Haiku, Chasing the Sun, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, and A Thousand Reasons 2009. Pamela was the founder and now is the solo Editor of Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka; the first all women’s tanka journal in the US.
This tanka grabbed our attention with its strong opening lines. After reading many entries that began with overused images such as flowers, the moon, and stars, the fetus inside a mother’s womb stood out to us. Then the poem shifts into its mysterious ending. Why does the speaker feel that her mother didn’t understand her even though she was inside her body? Has she always been an enigmatic child? These questions took us beyond the short five lines of the poem.
ReplyDelete-- excerpted from the judge's comments, accessed at https://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/tsa-contest/past-winners-and-judges-comments/2026-winners
The strength of this poignant tanka lies in the "sharp emotional pivot" in Ls 4&5.
DeleteLs 1–3 establish what initially seems to be a gentle, universal image of prenatal bonding. However, Ls 4&5 subvert this warmth into a complex psychological truth: despite the ultimate physical closeness of sharing a body, a profound emotional and existential distance remained. This creates a "powerful, heartbreaking PARADOX"—being physically closer to another human being than is ever again possible, while remaining entirely unknowable to them.